Design of PCB-based planar coil inductive coupler

Abstract

The coupling method used to superimpose and separate the data signal to and from the powerline plays a crucial role concerning the channel frequency response, the coupling efficiency, and also preserving the signal integrity against the peaks and notches caused by reflections, which will cancel certain carrier frequencies at the receiver. Furthermore, the coupling unit should be bi-directional to allow the signals coupling regardless the direction of data flow, likewise it needs to accomplish galvanic isolation together with transient protection, and offers more degrees of freedom to impedance-matching, as well as allocating less space and achieve high bandwidth for broadband coupling. This paper discusses an approach to pursue toward designing a printed-circuit board (PCB)-based planar coil inductive coupler with wide bandwidth for data transfer.The designed coupler will eventually be used to implement powerline communication (PLC) adequately for airborne use, where a real-case context study was investigated, also PLC implementation and tests were conducted as well as discussed from latency, bit error rate (BER) and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) compliance perspective with the RTCA DO-160G standard requirements.