Conference proceeding
Power line has been proposed as a solution to
deliver broadband services to end users. Various studies in the
recent past have reported the decrease in channel capacity with
increase in number of branches for a given channel type (indoor
channel or access (low voltage) channel or medium channel) [1-
4]. Those studies however did not provide a clear insight as to
how the channel capacity is related to the number of distributed
branches along the line. This paper attempts to quantify and
characterize the effects of channel capacity in relation to number
of branches and also with different terminal loads for a given
type of channel. It is shown that for power spectral density (PSD)
between -90dBm/Hz to -30dBm/Hz, the channel capacity
decreases by 20-30Mbps/branch, 14-24Mbps/branch and 20-
25Mbps/branch for medium voltage channel, low voltage channel
and indoor channel respectively. In additional, it is shown that
the channel capacity is minimum when the load impedance is
terminated in characteristic impedances for any type of channel
treated here. It is shown that there could be significant loss in
channel capacity if a ground return were used instead of adjacent
conductor return. The analysis presented in the paper would help
in designing appropriate power line communication equipment
for better and efficient data transfer.
Sida-SAREC