Attenuation effect of the wall structure on the electric field generated by indoor power line communication system

Abstract

The attenuation effect of the wall structure of a building on the electric field generated by an indoor power line communication (PLC) system is numerically investigated using the finite integration (FI) method. In particular, we focus on two types of wall structure (reinforced concrete and wooden structures) and the frequency range from 2MHz to 6MHz, for which the attenuation effect of a building on electric leakage has not yet been sufficiently analyzed. In our model, the electric field is evaluated at a point 1m from a finite-sized single wall to focus on the dependence of the electric field on the wall structure. As a result, it was found that more than 99% of the leakage of the electric field is suppressed by the reinforced concrete wall and more than 60% of the leakage of the electric field is suppressed by the wooden wall at frequencies of 2MHz–6MHz. Then we vary the distance of the view plane from the wall to examine the attenuation of the leakage electric field at 2MHz. As a result, it was found that more than 98% electric field loss was obtained for both structures when the distance of the view plane from the wall is more than 5m. It can be concluded that the reinforced concrete wall and the wooden wall are useful to suppress the leakage electric field caused by indoor PLC systems.