AN OVERVIEW OF PLC NETWORK PERFORMANCE IN

PRESENCE OF HOUSEHOLDS INTERFERENCE

Haroldo Zattar, Jakson Bonaldo

Department of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Mato Grosso, Cuiabá, Brazil

Gilberto Carrijo

Department of Electrical Engineering, Federal University of Uberlandia, Uberlândia, Brazil

Keywords: Power line communication, PLC network, impulsive noise at PLC network, PLC performance.

Abstract: This paper presents an overview of PLC. In addition the paper shows the performance of a PLC using an

experimental LAN network in presence of different types of noise caused by households. This paper also

presents the experimental results to find the best TCP window size to be used in a PLC network. The

performance investigation was accomplished in the Telecommunication laboratory of Federal University of

Mato Grosso, Brazil.

1 INTRODUCTION

Power Line Communication (PLC) is growing

interest in the prospect of reusing in building power

line cables to provide a broadband LAN within the

home or office. The major advantage offered by

power line based home networks is the availability

of an existing infrastructure of wires and wall

outlets. The use of this medium for communications

at higher frequencies presents some technical

challenging problems (Ferreira and Grové, 1996)

(Philipps, 1998) as interference. Electric appliances

with brush motors, switching power supplies and

halogen lamps are examples that produce impulsive

noise that can reduce the reliability of

communication signals (Gotz , Rapp, and Dostert,

2004) (Sutterlin and Downey). The objective of this

paper is to present the performance of PLC network

and evaluate it with different households’

interferences.

2 AN OVERVIEW OF PLC

PLC is a set of equipment, software and

management services that when overlaid on the

electric grid provides users with communication

means over existing power lines (cables

transmitting electricity) (Paulidov and Han Vink,

2002).

In Brazil we have only 14,49% of houses with

computers that access internet. Half of this value

uses broadband internet. Therefore PLC will have

many opportunities to offer broadband to homes and

small offices. On the other hand, power lines have

many problems to overcome. Noise in power lines is

a significant problem for data transmission (Ma and

So, 2005). This is because it rarely has similar

properties to the easily analyzed white Gaussian

noise of the receiver front ends.

Typical sources of noise are brush motors,

fluorescent and halogen lamps, switching power

supplies and dimmer switches. The noise in power

lines can be impulsive or frequency selective in

nature and, sometimes, both. The noise in power

lines can be classified into four categories (Hrasnica

and Haidine, 2004): Colored noise, narrowband

background noise, periodic impulsive noise and

impulsive noise.

Due to the above mentioned power line channel

characteristics, it is necessary to carefully select

modulation schemes and sophisticated error

correction and detection technologies for forming up

reliable physical layers as a basis for robust PLC. In

this paper the PLC equipments work with multi

carrier modulation in the form of orthogonal

frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)

230

Zattar H., Bonaldo J. and Carrijo G. (2008).

AN OVERVIEW OF PLC NETWORK PERFORMANCE IN PRESENCE OF HOUSEHOLDS INTERFERENCE.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - SAIC, pages 230-233

DOI: 10.5220/0001690502300233

 SciTePress

(Sugimoto, 2002) (Langton, 2004) (Pinto and

Albuquerque, 2002).

3 PLC NETWORK ELEMENTS

PLC network uses the electrical supply grids as a

medium for the transmission of different kinds of

information and the realization of various

communications and automation services. The basic

network elements are PLC adapter, PLC base/master

station and filter.

4 THE PLC ADAPTERS

CHARACTERISTICS

In this paper the adapter used was an AV200 power

line Ethernet adapter and a filter. Both from

Corinex. This Ethernet adapter supports distribution

of video, voice and broadband internet access over

premise existing electrical wires. The AV200 PLC

Corinex features are (AV 200, 2007):

 10/100 Base T Fast Ethernet interface;

 Physical data rate in the power line up to 200

Mbps with distances up to 300 m;

 OFDM technology and powerful error

correction system

 Frequency operation from 13.3 to 33.3 MHz.

 MAC filtering can discard Ethernet frames if

they come from source MAC address which is

not present in a list of allowed MAC

addresses.

 Integrated 802.1 Q VLAN.

5 PLC NETWORK

CONFIGURATIONS

In order to investigate the PLC network

performance, this paper uses a simple LAN

network configuration illustrated in figure 1. The

filter was used in PLC network to isolate this

network from noise, or traffic, from the rest of the

electrical grid.

A test was accomplished to verify the performance

results using a configuration showed in the figure 2.

It was used to verify and certify that the filter really

isolates the electrical noise produced by household

appliance. Two analyzers were used simultaneously

to guarantee that the result during the FTP process

was almost the same.

6 EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In this paper were investigated the PLC performance

in a best condition and normal condition and in the

presence of households interference. It was also

accomplished an evaluation related to the efficiency

result considering the increase of the TCP window

size. All parts of the tests were run five times and

the average result will be showed in this paper.

Figure 1: Simple network configuration.

Figure 2: PLC network configuration with an electrical

appliance noise over a PLC filter.

AN OVERVIEW OF PLC NETWORK PERFORMANCE IN PRESENCE OF HOUSEHOLDS INTERFERENCE

231

6.1 PLC Performance Considering the

Best Condition

The first experimental tests were used to verify the

performance of the PLC network using the network

configuration of the figure 1 without electrical noise

appliance and using an appropriate filter. The result

is shown in figure 3.

Figure 3: Throughput result of PLC network without noise

presence and using a noise filter.

Analyzing the graph it is possible to note that

the average throughput was 92.36 Mbps and the

maximum throughput obtained was 96.73 Mbps.

Therefore the efficiency result is 92.36%. The

PLC channel bandwidth is 100 Mb because it is

limited by 10/100 Base T Fast Ethernet interface

that interconnects the PLC adapter with the

computer. In the computer it was used GB

Ethernet board. In this condition the efficiency is

almost the same of using an Ethernet LAN. The

reason is that the noise filter is really able to

avoid external interference provided by

households.

After this, it was used some electric household

as mixer, TV, ventilator, blender, electric razor,

hairdryer, dimmer, halogen lamp and switch

power supply to generate noise on the PLC

network and to evaluate the result performance.

The throughput result is showed in figure 4. It was

used the network configuration of figure 1. The

analysis made with halogen lamp and mixer

showed that they also affect the performance of

the PLC LAN network.

Analyzing the graph, it is possible to verify

that the use of TV with ventilator together

operating in the LAN network offer very low

noise and therefore the efficiency reached was

almost near the best condition obtained. While the

best condition efficiency is 92.36%, the result

with the presence of TV and ventilator reached

90.6% of efficiency. Then the conclusion is that

these two households produce low noise that does

not damage the computers during data transfer

using a PLC network.

On the other hand, the others electric equipments

affect directly the PLC network efficiency.

This happens because these households produce

impulsive noise that is very damaging to PLC

networks. The worst results were obtained using

switch power supply. The efficiency result was less

than 1%. Therefore the use of noise filter is

necessary to protect the network communication

avoiding a drastic reduction of the PLC LAN

network efficiency.

Comparison of the electric appliance noise over PLC LAN network

100

012345678910

Time (min)

Efficiency (%

)

ideal situation dry hair blender

dimmer mixer electric razor

TV and ventilator halogen lamp switching power supply

Figure 4: Efficiency result of PLC network considering a

noise presence from electrics appliances.

The efficiency reached by them was less than

30%. Then it is important to use a noise filter for

each halogen lamp and for the use of mixer. When a

dimmer and electric razor was tested the efficiency

result was less than 40%. Finally it was tested a

hairdryer and a blender which the efficiency result

was near of 50%.

These results prove that when there is an

incidence of noise it is necessary to use an

appropriate filter to avoid low efficiency in a PLC

network. The Corinex noise filter tested really

solved the interference caused by the analyzed

households. Therefore PLC network is indicated to

be used at residences and small offices with

excellent performance.

6.2 PLC LAN Network Evaluation

Related to the Increase of the TCP

Window Size

One of the main factors for the TCP/IP architecture

over PLC networks to become attractive is to make

the available bandwidth in the link capable to be

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232

large used during data transmission. To make this

happen it is possible to increase the initial

congestion window (Paduri, 1998) (Zattar, 2007).

The figure 5 shows the throughput results for each

TCP window size.

Throughput x window size

100

1248163264128256512104820964192

window size (KB)

Throughput (Mbps)

Figure 5: Results from PLC LAN network related to the

increase of the TCP Window size.

Taking a look at figure 5 it is possible to note

that with the increase of the TCP window size, the

throughput results grow. The maximum efficiency is

reached with TCP window size of 512 KB. For this

situation the efficiency result was upper than 90%.

For the TCP window size upper than 512 KB, the

PLC LAN efficiency become lower.

6.3 PLC Performance in a LAN

without Noise Filter

It was accomplished the analysis of the PLC

considering a LAN without noise filter as showed at

figure 1 without using a noise filter.

The results obtained are presented in figure 6. The

TCP window size was 512 KB. Observing the graph

of the figure 6 the throughput average was 86.44

Mbps and the maximum throughput reached was

96.76 Mbps.

Figure 6: Throughput result of PLC network without an

appropriate filter.

7 CONCLUSIONS

This paper showed the analysis performance of PLC

network considering a best condition for a LAN.

Another analysis was made evaluating the efficiency

result considering the interference presence by some

households. The worst efficiency was obtained when

it was used a switch power supply. The results

obtained considering the increase of TCP window

size showed that 512 KB is the most adequate size

for the PLC LAN network. For an operating of a

PLC LAN network it is fact that the noise filter is

necessary to reach high efficiency result.

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