Investigation of Indoor Low-voltage Cables as Data Communication Channels

Power Line Communication (PLC) has been considered as attractive media for high speed data transmission, particularly for applications like home networking, internet, voice and data services. For the use of the low voltage networks as high speed data channel the path carrier frequencies within the range up to 30 MHz must be considered. The development of suitable communication systems and the planning of PLC networks require modelling of the transfer characteristics of the main network in the mentioned frequency range. In this paper the considered PLC channel is the North Delta Electricity Distribution Company (NDEDC) indoor low voltage cables (16 2 mm CU/PVC). The frequency and phase responses of a single-phase power line channel with interconnections are derived. The channel transfer function is obtained and investigated using different cable lengths, and different number of branches under a given loading conditions. Loading mismatch at different branches is considered. Transfer characteristics of power line channel from Energy Meter (EM) to End User (EU) have been modelled using chain matrix method. Simulation results indicate that there are significant attenuations and distortions as the number of branches, cable length, and load mismatch are increased. The model is simulated using MATLAB environment as an effort to investigate the effects of cable length, load mismatch, multi-branches on the transmitted data signal through the considered PLC channel.