Abstract
Power line communications (PLC) have been an active research area for many years and it is still the case, mainly because they present economic and technical natural advantages for a wide range of applications using the existing electrical grid as transmission medium. In this paper, the authors provide an update on PLC technologies and their applications in Smart Grids, the main challenges they are currently facing, how they can be addressed, and the current research initiatives.
Highlights
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are a key aspect in Smart Grids (SG) applications, in general, and in Smart Metering and Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI) [1]–[3], in particular
The simulation results of this study show a clear improvement of the data rate, since an increase over 80 % in median bidirectional data rates is achieved under typical in-home power line networking conditions, without any additional power or bandwidth requirement
This paper provides a review of the role, status, and challenges to Power Line Communications (PLC), based on the authors combined theoretical and practical experience
Summary
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are a key aspect in Smart Grids (SG) applications, in general, and in Smart Metering and Advanced Metering Infrastructures (AMI) [1]–[3], in particular. Power Line Communications (PLC) present some natural advantages that make them appropriate for this kind of applications, such as the advantage of using the already deployed electrical grid as the communication medium. Since such cables were designed to transmit power, instead of data, they are usually a harsh communication medium, suffering from frequency fading, variation of the properties of the propagation medium caused by the continuous connection and disconnection of different loads, Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI), and, above all, a variety of noises and non-intentional emissions (NIE) generated by regular appliances, such as TVs or boilers, and by novel equipment, such as Distributed Generation (DG) devices, Electric Vehicles (EVs) or battery chargers [4], [5] (the so-called, Grid Edge Technologies [6]).
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