Design and implementation of zero power wake-up for PLC modems in smart street lighting systems

Power line communication is becoming important as a leading technology in Smart Grid applications. This paper presents a new system to reduce the power consumption of the power line modems, implementing a zero-power stand-by feature. The incoming wake-up signal is as simple as a PLC frame and its associated energy is used to supply the wake-up logic. The system is mainly conceived for street lighting systems that use power line communication and where the stand-by power represents an issue because there are thousands of lamps in a city, and the total power consumption of the modems in stand-by mode is not negligible. This paper presents the architecture of the system, as well as the design choices. Experimental results of the system applied to a street light network show that it is possible to wake-up selectively a cluster of lamps up to a distance of about 250m.