Power Line Communications (PLC) is a recent and rapidly evolving technology, aiming
at the utilization of the electricity power lines for the transmission of data. PLC
technology opens up new opportunities for the mass provision of local, last-mile access at
a reasonable cost. PLC can furthermore provide a multitude of new Information Society
services - both in the energy and telecom domains - to residential and commercial users
that are difficult or costly to implement through other technologies.
PLC technology has a number of important strengths: it offers a permanent on-line
connection as well as symmetric, two-way communication; it has good performance, very
good geographical coverage, and is relatively cheap because most of the infrastructure is
already in place. Currently, the main weaknesses of PLC technology are that it is still in
the developmental stage.
It is likely not to be the only one: rather, it will be part of a range of complementary
technologies, because each technology yields a different compromise between
bandwidth, reach, noise immunity, and cost. This report starts by looking at access
technologies and describing the power line as a communication medium and then
frequency response and noise characteristics. A transmission technique (OFDM) that
avoids power line noise and uses the common modulation formats is also explained.
The results of this work shows that the power line technology can be used as a
communication channel for urban areas and fast developing rural areas. This is because
of the bandwidth is uses. A proposed future research for slow developing rural areas is
found in the conclusion. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)- University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/8979 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Mhlongo, Thembinkosi E. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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