A comparison of receiver topologies for Digital Load-Side Transmission in general LED lighting

Digital Load-Side Transmission (DLT) is a two-wire bound power line communication methodology that has been specifically developed for general lighting applications and transmits data over mains. This paper proposes three DLT receiver concepts and compares them to one other regarding robustness, complexity and power consumption. All of these detectors have been realized and tested in hardware. To evaluate robustness in terms of utility grid variations, 24-hour long term measurements have been taken for each concept, when connected to 50 Hz mains. A telegram error rate (TER) has been measured for all setups, while the power consumption of the implemented receivers has been determined by Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE) simulations. A fully digital approach and an active analog bandpass based structure seem to be the most promising solutions as they feature comparable TERs of 44 and 80 parts per million (ppm), respectively. All presented topologies can be monolithically integrated on a chip to facilitate development of highly integrated, intelligent LED drivers.