A complete node for power line communications in a single chip

Abstract

This paper describes the implementation of a complete node for narrow band power line communications (PLC) in a new single chip. This chip, named ADD1000, includes an 8051 microcontroller, a 14 bit enhanced UART designed for the medium access control (MAC) tasks and a modem circuit for PLC. This work is based in previous designs (A. Sanz et al., 2001) (J.I. Garcia Nicolas et al., 2000) but introduces some key improvements. Low power modes, and other upgrades, are built in the micro-controller. Also, the MAC is modified in order to support, not only the European Home Systems specifications (EHS) for the power line medium (1997), but also KONNEX (KNX) (2000), IEC 61334, HTTP and TCP/IP. The PLC modem is changed to use band pass converters. Finally a software layer has been developed to support the HTTP and TCP/IP using the MAC and modem of chip. Using this soft layer any device using the ADD1000 chip can be an embedded Web server of a TCP/IP PLC network.