HomePlug 1.0 powerline communication LANs—protocol description and performance results

Products implementing the HomePlug 1.0 standard allowing high‐speed communication on low‐voltage powerlines have recently started arriving on the U.S. market for home and office networking without the requirement for installing new wires. Effective use of the powerline bandwidth requires robust physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) protocols to mitigate the harsh conditions of the powerline channel as well as the capability to support prioritized multimedia traffic. This paper describes powerline communications and the HomePlug 1.0 protocol, based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), along with its changes to allow prioritized channel access. It then presents performance results for the HomePlug 1.0 protocol using a simulation model, ideal laboratory measurements with actual HomePlug 1.0 devices and field tests in a residential building. Simulation and laboratory data rates were around 6 Mbps, and field tests gave rates from 1.6 to 5.3 Mbps at the application level.