A novel power line communication system for outdoor electric power grids

Author

Ribeiro, Moises V. ; Campos, Fabricio P. V. ; Colen, Guilherme R. ; Schettino, Hugo V. ; Fernandes, Diogo ; Sirimarco, Lucas M. ; Fernandes, Victor ; Picorone, Antonio A. M.

Author_Institution

Electr. Eng. Dept., Fed. Univ. of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil

fYear

2015

fDate

March 29 2015-April 1 2015

Firstpage

228

Lastpage

233

Abstract

This paper outlines a novel power line communication (PLC) system that was specified, designed, and prototyped to address the features of low-voltage and outdoor Brazilian electric power grids when the frequency band between 1.7 and 50 MHz, which complies with the Brazilian regulation for broadband PLC, is considered. The proposed PLC system is constituted by a PLC base station and several PLC modems. Also, it makes use of the clustered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing scheme to divide the total frequency bandwidth into several subchannels (clusters). As a result, the maximum throughput achieved by a PLC modem is a fraction of the maximum throughput that a PLC base station can offer and, as a consequence, the computational complexity as well as hardware resource utilization demanded by a PLC modem is considerably reduced in relation to the PLC base station. Data-rate as high as 24 Mbps can be attained in each subchannel at the application level, finally, but not the least, this PLC system can be useful for smart grid communication and digital inclusion.

Keywords

OFDM modulation; carrier transmission on power lines; resource allocation; smart power grids; Brazilian electric power grids; Brazilian regulation; PLC modem; PLC system; bandwidth 1.7 MHz; bandwidth 50 MHz; broadband PLC; digital inclusion; hardware resource utilization; orthogonal frequency division multiplexing scheme; outdoor electric power grids; power line communication system; smart grid communication; Data communication; Distance measurement; Hardware; Modems; OFDM; Physical layer; Power systems;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Power Line Communications and its Applications (ISPLC), 2015 International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISPLC.2015.7147619

Filename

7147619