PLC Channel Performance Analysis for Low-Voltage Access Networks

Abstract

In this paper, powerline communication (PLC) channel performance is studied based on experimental low-voltage access network topologies. Specifically, the influence of powerline length and branch length on transfer function is analyzed for different powerline networks with single-branch and multi-branch multi-user topologies. The results show that with the increasing of power line length, the attenuation of transfer function is gradually increasing, and the longer the branch length is, the more obvious the frequency selective fading effect will be in PLC channels. In the multi-branch multi-user network topology, nodes affect is obvious in both transfer function and waveforms due to more reflection paths. The presented results are useful for design and development of low-voltage access PLC systems.