A power line communication network infrastructure for the smart home

Low voltage electrical wiring has largely been dismissed as too noisy and unpredictable to support high-speed communication signals. Advances in communication and modulation methodologies as well as in adaptive digital signal processing and error detection and correction have spawned novel protocols capable of supporting power line communication networks at speeds comparable to wired LANs. We motivate the use of power line LANs as a basic infrastructure for building integrated smart homes, wherein information appliances ranging from simple control or monitoring devices to multimedia entertainment systems are seamlessly interconnected by the very wires that provide them electricity. By simulation and actual measurements using "reference design" prototype commercial powerline products, we show that the HomePlug MAC and PHY layers can guarantee QoS for real-time communications, supporting delay-sensitive data streams for smart home applications.

Introduction

Many next-generation appliances are being equipped with processors featuring sophisticated communication capabilities. For instance, on April 7, 2001, IBM and Carrier announced plans to produce an air conditioner with Java support that can email manufacturers regarding errors, and will allow users to remotely send commands to the unit to adjust temperatures or shut it down. Smart homes will eventually have many types of information appliances (IAs) communicating among themselves and with the outside world. Soon, many of these IA devices are expected to have multimedia capability. Supporting multimedia communication for these IA devices will be of crucial importance for the intelligent homes of the future.