Noise Measurement in Low-Voltage Powerline for Modem Design and Serial Dataacquisition

Narrowband power line communication modem (PLCM), robust to the harsh and unpredictable characteristics of the power line channel, was designed for the purpose of serial data acquisition. This paper reviews the type of noise present in power line channel at narrowband, and noise measurement was carried out on the indoor low-voltage network at the frequency range from 20 kHz to 500 kHz. The results were used for the consideration of a robust and simple narrowband PLCM design. The modem was built upon the ATMEL microcontroller 89C51 chip to achieve reliable performance and reduced hardware complexity, and economic system. Master-slave architecture with RS-232 asynchronous serial communication has been followed. Proper carrier frequency-band and modulation schemes immune to synchronous impulse noise in low-voltage power line communication were suggested.