Telecommunication applications over the low voltage power distribution grid

Abstract

Using low voltage energy distribution grids as high-speed communication networks opens up the possibility to utilities to establish widespread local area networks for telecommunication services such as telephony and Internet access without the necessity of additional cabling. Since communication systems, suitable for high-speed transmission over electrical power lines, are not available yet, considerable efforts are currently being spent on designing such systems. Due to the special properties of power distribution grids as communication channels, profound investigations of the channel properties must have been done before a successful development of reliable and efficient systems is possible. At the University of Karlsruhe extensive measurements of typical channel properties are currently under way. Some of the results are presented in this work, giving a first impression of the most important channel properties. However, the main goal of this paper is to investigate and describe suitable strategies for advanced multiple access systems.