Keynote 1. PHY LAYER and standardization

Summary form only given. In this talk, recent standardization activities in the field of power line communications will be reviewed, giving particular emphasis to the activities of the IEEE P1901 and of the ITU-T G.9960 (G.hn) Working Groups (WGs) since their efforts have now come to a critical stage: in December 2008, a baseline of the IEEE P1901 standard passed the confirmation vote; in December 2008, ITU-T consented on Recommendation G.9960 which constitutes the G.hn foundation document and specifies system architecture, most of the PHY, and parts of the MAC. Some design choices in IEEE and ITU standards will be reviewed giving particular emphasis to IS-Imitigation, FEC and co-existence aspects. Finally, the importance of defining a common reference channel model will be pointed out and a possible solution to this challenging problem will be proposed.