POWERLINE COMMUNICATION

BY

ADEMOLA QUADRI SHINA HC20210103905

SUBMITTED TO THE

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE

FEDERAL POLYTECHNIC EDE, OSUN STATE

SEPTEMBER, 2023
 ABSTRACT

Rapidly increasing usage of telecommunication systems causes new transmission technologies

and networks to emerge. Not only the efficiency, reliability and accessibility of the network are
important, but also the economic issues. One cost-effective solution could be power line
communication (PLC) technology, which transmits data using the existing electricity
infrastructure. The application of this communication technique is an attractive and innovative
solution for the realization of smart cities and smart homes. With intelligent control networks,
energy savings can be optimized and the operating as well as maintenance costs can be reduced.
Since outdoor lighting systems are the major consumers of electricity, to create a modern,
energy-efficient city, intelligent street lighting control is needed. This paper provides an
overview of power line communication principles including the theoretical background of data
communication, modulation techniques, channel access methods, protocols, disturbances and
noises. Furthermore, in order to highlight the benefits of a PLC-based street lighting control
system, a pilot project will be presented. Keywords: intelligent lighting control, modulation
techniques, Power line communication, smart city, smart grid

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 INTRODUCTION

Power line communication (PLC) is a very attractive technology, which can be used for many
applications, such as home automation systems, CCTV cameras, pollution sensors, noise
detectors, traffic density sensors, advertising backlit panels, solar applications, energy
measurements, street lighting control or vehicle communication networks (InteliLIGHT,2016).

According to US Energy Information, Energy usage of street lighting accounts for a

significant portion of the total energy consumption of a city. In order to reduce energy
consumption, CO2 emission, light pollution, to improve public safety and enhance public service
quality, implementation of an intelligent light control system is essential (InteliLIGHT,2016).
PLC is a natural choice for supporting intelligent lighting control systems in order to ensure the
optimal illumination level under any operational circumstances and to reduce operational costs.
A PLC network can also be the backbone communication infrastructure for a smart grid, which
enables reliable, real-time measurements, monitoring and control. The implementation of this
management solution is cost-effective, since the communication is done over the existing power
lines and therefore no additional infrastructure is needed. Due to this fact, PLC technology can
compete with wireless technology and can be a communication medium in a future smart grid
(Caytiles,2015). There are three basic network elements for the realization of a PLC system: base
station, modem and repeater. PLC technology provides a link between the subscribers and their
immediate service provider. The application of PLC in the power supply grid can be considered
as a communication solution for the access network. To connect the access network to a wide
area network (WAN), a PLC base station is used. To make communication possible over power
supply grids, PLC modems are needed between the communication devices and power lines,
which convert data signals into a suitable form for both directions of transmission. A PLC
modem has two interfaces: on the user side, it provides Ethernet and USB network interfaces and
in order to connect the PLC modem to the power line, PLC signal injection should be realized by
inductive or conductive coupling. The PLC modem carries out the function of the physical layer
(PHY) and the data-link layer (DLL, including both of the sublayers, the media access control
(MAC) and the logical link control (LLC)). In case of longer network distances, repeaters are
used to ensure sufficient data rate. The repeaters divide the PLC access network into network
segments. In order to separate the segments, different frequency bands or time slots are used.

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With segmentation, signal power and electromagnetic radiation can be reduced, but network
capacity decreases, because wider frequency bands have to be used to avoid the interference
between the segments (Hrasnica,2005). Gateways are usually used for better network efficiency,
dividing the PLC access network into subnetworks. Gateways not only forward the data between
the networks, but can also interconnect networks, which use different network protocols by
performing the required protocol conversions. The drawback of this setup is that repeaters and
gateways are expensive elements and because of the signal conversion, propagation delay can
occur. It is also of note that the frequency ranges are limited in the case of PLC, and losses on the
medium can negatively influence power transmission. Various noise sources (different electrical
devices connected to the power supply grids with the same electromagnetic spectrum) can also
cause disturbances in the PLC service (Hrasnica,2005).

1.2 APPLICATIONS OF PLC

PLC is widely used in technologies like Smart Grid and micro-inverters. Getting the technologies
familiar with more number of users, soon PLC will have more adaptation for applications like
lighting applications (for traffic light control, LED dimming etc.), industrial applications (for
irrigation control etc.), machine-to-machine applications (like for vending machines or a hotel’s
reception-to-room communication), telemetry applications (e.g. offshore oil rigs), transport
applications (like for electronics in cars, trains, and airplanes) and many more. (Abhimanyu,
2019)

1.3 USES OF PLC

The PLC is used for transmitting radio programs, utility company control switching mechanisms,
transmission line protection, and automatic meter reading. Apart from that, there are also some
automotive uses where the data, voice, and music are sent over direct current (DC) battery power
line with some special filters to remove the line noise from the final output. (Abhimanyu, 2019)

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 INTRODUCTION

Power line Communications (PLC), also known as Power Line Telecommunications (PLT) is the
communication technology which uses the existing public and private wiring for the transmission
of the signals. Using PLC communication signals, high-speed data, voice and video are
transmitted over low-voltage power lines. (Abhimanyu, 2019)

There are two frequency ranges for PLC: narrowband and broadband.

Defined by CENELEC, narrowband PLC (NB-PLC) networks operate between 3–148.5 kHz in
Europe. This frequency range is divided into four bands: A, B, C and D. Band A [3–95 kHz] is
restricted to the energy suppliers, frequency bands B [95–125 kHz], C [125–140 kHz], D [140–
148.5 kHz] can only be used by consumers. Typically, NB-PLC systems operate between 35–90
kHz in the CENELEC A band, while broadband PLC (BB-PLC) networks use the 3–34 MHz
frequency band (Hrasnica,2005). The NB-PLC systems can provide data rates up to few
thousand bps, while the BB-PLC systems have reached few hundred Mbps (Yigit,2014).These
higher data rates can enable high-speed data transmission, multiple voice connections and
transfer of video signals as well. The main differences between narrowband and broadband PLC
are in frequency range, information capability, power and attenuation (Hrasnica,2005).

2.2 Modulation techniques

Modulation techniques are methods, which are used to code analogue data into digital format.
There are various types of digital modulation schemes depending on the type of the signal and
the application (Sharma,2007). The most common types will be described below.

1. Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK): in this case, the carrier signal is modulated with a binary
message (0 or 1). The carrier signal is transmitted, if the signal value is 1, but when this value is
0, the carrier signal will not be transmitted. The amplitude shift keying (ASK) technique is
sensitive to disturbances and it has not constant envelope which makes power amplification more
difficult. The first NB-PLC systems were realized by this modulation technique (Hrasnica,2005).

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2. Frequency Shift Keying (FSK), Binary Frequency Shift Keying (BFSK): digital information is
transmitted through discrete frequency changes of the carrier wave. The two different digital
values of 0 and 1 represent two different frequencies. This modulation technique can be used for
narrowband and broadband communications depending on the separation of the two frequencies
(Hrasnica,2005). Although it is a cost-effective solution, it is not bandwidth-efficient and
requires a complex receiver design.

3. Phase Shift Keying (PSK), Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK), Quadrature Phase Shift
Keying (QPSK): when the carrier wave phase is discretely varied, the modulation scheme is
called phase shift keying (PSK). In the case of BPSK, two different digital values (0 and 1) are
used and when a binary change occurs in the serial binary data, the carrier wave shifts 180°. For
QPSK, bit pairs are used. Each bit pair represents different carrier phase shifts. The bit pairs and
phase degrees are the following: 00–45°, 01–135°, 11–225°, 10–315°, where for instance a phase
change of 45° means 00. The amount of the information associates with a phase or the number of
the discrete phases that the carrier wave contains. In case of ASK, BFSK and BPSK, the baud
rate is 1 bit/symbol, while QPSK can transmit 2 bits/symbol (Lou,2021).

4. Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM): quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) is the

combination of amplitude and phase modulation. For instance 16-QAM uses twelve carrier
phases plus three amplitude levels to transmit 4 bits per symbol (Lou,2021).

5. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM): orthogonal frequency division

multiplexing (OFDM) is a multicarrier modulation technique. In contrast with singlecarrier, the
data is not transmitted by only one carrier, but they are shared among several carriers and are
transmitted simultaneously. The single high-rate data stream is subdivided into N low-rate
parallel substreams. Each substream is modulated over a separate carrier signal subcarrier,
moreover each subcarrier can be modulated differently (BPSK, QPSK etc.). The subcarriers are
not separated but overlapped and they are orthogonal, which means that the peak of one
subcarrier occurs when other subcarriers are zero (Xiao,2013). OFDM has several advantages. It
is robust in a multipath propagation environment, more resistant against fading, tolerant to delay
spread and it can minimize the effect of intersymbol interference (ISI) (Hrasnica,2005). Since N
different subcarriers are used, the symbol duration of a signal is N times longer than the signal
duration of the original signal. To avoid interference, a guard interval (cyclic prefix) is used

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between the signals. The cyclic prefix is a copied portion of the end of a symbol, which is put at
the head of the symbol.

2.3 Spread-spectrum techniques

The spread-spectrum method is a technique in which a pseudo noise code, independent from
information data, is used as a modulation waveform. It results in greater bandwidth than the
signal information bandwidth. The big advantage of these techniques is that the broadband,
noise-like signals are more resistant to interference, noise and jamming, and it is harder to detect,
intercept and demodulate them than narrowband signals (Hrasnica,2005). Commonly used
techniques are listed below:

1. Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS): In this method, the binary data (bits) are logically
compared to a string of pseudo noise (PN) code bits (chips). The chip rate (R c=1/Tc) is much
higher than the data rate (Rs=1/Ts). The binary data is multiplied with the PN code to produce the
transmitter signal. The effect of the multiplication of the bits and chips is the spread of the
baseband bandwidth Rc to the baseband Rs . Afterwards, usually BPSK or PSK modulations are
used to transmit the signal to the high frequency. The receiver compares the spread spectrum
signal with the same chip sequence used in the transmitter and then, a demodulator is applied to
reproduce the transmitted data (Meel,2019).

2. Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS): This method spreads narrowband transmitted
signals, hopping one frequency to the next. The transmission frequencies change according to the
pseudo noise sequence. Compared to the above-mentioned spread spectrum techniques, DSSS
can provide higher data rate than FHSS, since in order to increase the data rate at DSSS, only the
clock rate has to be increased, while at FHSS a wider bandwidth is needed. DSSS transmission is
continuous and broadband, while FHSS transmission is discontinuous and narrowband. FHSS is
more susceptible to narrowband noise and interference, than DSSS (Meel,2019).

2.4 Channel Access Method (CAM):

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Channel access methods are used to allow individual users to use the same fixed bandwidth.
There are three basic access schemes depending on which channel is separated, but their
combination can also be used :

1. Frequency-division multiple access (FDMA): in an FDMA scheme, the available system

bandwidth is divided into non-overlapping bands. In order to reduce the interference, there is a
guard band between the adjacent frequencies. The frequency bands are assigned among the
users, so that no other user can use the same band. The frequency band can be reassigned, when
the user terminates the service.

2. Time division multiple access (TDMA): TDMA allows the users to use the same band by
dividing the signal into different time shots. To avoid that data from adjacent time slots interfere,
there is a protection intervals (guard period) between the time slots. A certain number of
timeslots forms a TDMA frame. When disturbances occur, just the erroneous, but segmented
data packets have to be retransmitted, therefore this scheme is widely used in PLC technology
(Hrasnica,2005).

3. Code division multiple access (CDMA): the CDMA access method transmits the data
according to a special coding scheme. This method enables to send information simultaneously
over a single communication channel

2.5 Protocol

In PLC, the medium is listened to by both the PHY level (physical carrier sense) and the MAC
layer level (virtual carrier sense). In order to avoid collision by different users, the channel is
listened to before sending the data. If the medium is free for a DCF interframe space (DIFS)
interval, transmission is permitted. If the frame is successfully received, the receiver sends an
acknowledgment frame (ACK) to notify the source of successful reception. The time between the
reception of a frame and the transmission of the ACK is called short inter-frame space (SIFS). If
the channel is used, the sender must wait a random period of time before attempting to access the
medium again (back off time). carrier sense mechanism, first the sender transmits an RTS
(request-to-send) packet, which indicates the transmission time required for the data and the
ACK packet. Receiving the RTS packet, the destination station sends back a CTS (clear-to-send)
packet after SIFS time. Implementation of the RTS/CTS mechanism can help avoid collisions,

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since each station in the range of the receiver is informed about the transmission
(Hrasnica,2005).

2.6 Coupling

There are two different methods, inductive and capacitive coupling, to connect PLC devices to
the transmission medium (Carcelle,2009). The basic function of the coupling circuit in a PLC
modem ensures the maximum power for both transmission and reception modes. It protects
devices from transient components and rejects noise signals. Inductive coupling is noisier than
capacitive coupling, but it can reduce attenuation by 10 to 15 dB for some frequencies
(Carcelle,2009). It can also be an advantage that no physical connection to the grid has to be
made, because the inductive couplers are electrically insulated from the power cables. In case of
inductive coupling, a ring-shaped ferrite is clamped around the cable in order to inject the
communication signal. The inductive coupler can be considered a transformer, which has a
modem-side primary winding, and a power cable side secondary winding. In this way, the signal
is directly induced through the coupler, to and from the power cable. Capacitive coupling is the
preferred method at coupling points with relatively high impedance (>20 Ω) and when inductive
coupling is not possible due to high current ratings, or the geometry of the couplers cannot allow
the access due to too small inner diameter of the ferrite [16, 17]. 2.7 Power supply grid
Realization of the PLC network depends on the power supply grid levels. There are three power
supply grid levels, high-, medium- and low-voltage level. The high-voltage grid (110 kV or
above) is the backbone of the electricity supply system. It is a part of the transmission stage and
connects power stations with large supply regions or big consumers. It enables long-distance
transmission using high voltage (110 kV, 220 kV, 330 kV, 400 kV, 750 kV) in order to reduce
line losses. Power is usually transmitted through overhead power lines, but in urban areas or
sensitive regions underground power transmission is used. The medium-voltage grid (usually
10–30 kV) supplies urban and rural areas. Overhead and underground power lines are also used.
MV grids usually have ring topology. Low-voltage grid (400 V) supplies households and small
industrial clients. Home electrical installations belong to the low-voltage level, but are owned by
the users [19]. PLC systems are primarily used in medium- or low voltage grids. The attenuation
is determined by the cable and coupling losses. The attenuation is lower and less frequency
selective on the medium-voltage grid, than on the low-voltage grid. On the other hand,

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attenuation shows frequency-dependence; the coupling loss decreases with increasing frequency.
From a certain frequency, the cable loss becomes dominant, therefore the attenuation increases
again. An underground MV power grid is less influenced by noises, compared with LV power
grid (Hrasnica,2005).

FINDING AND RESULT

3.1 Findings

1. PLC technology uses existing electrical power lines for data transmission.

2. It eliminates the need for a separate network infrastructure, reducing installation costs.

3. PLC is employed in applications like smart grids and home automation.

4. The performance of PLC can vary based on the quality of electrical wiring and
interference.

5. PLC provides wide coverage suitable for both residential and commercial use.

3.2 Results

1. PLC offers a cost-effective and efficient solution for data communication by utilizing
existing power lines.

2. It is a versatile technology with applications in various sectors, promoting automation

and connectivity.

3. The quality of electrical wiring can affect the reliability and speed of PLC
communication.

4. Despite challenges, PLC remains a valuable choice for extending network connectivity.

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 5. Ongoing advancements in PLC technology are expected to enhance its performance and
reliability in the future.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Power Line Communication (PLC) is a versatile technology that harnesses

existing electrical power lines for data transmission. It eliminates the need for additional network
infrastructure, offering a cost-effective solution for various applications, including smart grids
and home automation. While the performance of PLC can be influenced by factors like the
quality of electrical wiring and interference, it continues to be a valuable option for extending
network connectivity in both residential and commercial settings. With ongoing advancements,
PLC is poised to play an increasingly significant role in the future of data communication.

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