Broadband over Powerline field trial for commercial in-building application in a Multi-Dwelling-Unit environment

This paper presents the results of a twelve month broadband over powerline (BPL) in-building trial in a multi-dwelling unit (MDU) environment utilizing the building´s low voltage electric distribution wiring for the BPL system transport medium to support an IP closed circuit television (CCTV) and VoIP intercom application. Specifically, the BPL infrastructure for this trial was designed to provide high speed bi-directional data communications in support of voice and video security applications for a sixteen story residential building with over one hundred apartments. The BPL system has been extensively monitored during the trial over a five month period with a network management system and has been highly stable, indicating a viable network solution using this technology for broadband applications such as CCTV and Intercom. In contrast to traditional CAT-5E cabling, this system had a much shorter implementation time along with up to 50% cost savings.