Achievable Data Rates of Broadband Power Line Communications in an Underground Medium-Voltage Network

摘要

Power line communications (PLC) or broadband over power lines (BPL) are getting popular for communication in smart grids. Consequently, new BPL standards have been introduced and new norms for the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) of BPL are approaching. In this paper, the gross data rate is evaluated, which becomes achievable, if the newly approaching European EMC norm prEN 50561 is applied to IEEE 1901 compliant BPL. For comparison also older EMC norms are considered. The achievable data rate depends on the standardized transmission techniques and on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To evaluate the SNR in underground medium-voltage (MV) networks, the channel attenuation and the noise have been measured on a 700 m MV line and compared to previous publications.