Adaptive Layer Switching for PLC networks with repeaters

Adaptive Layer Switching (ALS) is a mechanism that allows the changing of the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer of the Power Line Communication (PLC) network in the runtime. According to the delay-throughput tradeoff dependencies for Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) it switches them for the corresponding network utilization. In this way the advantage of the low access delay for the low network utilization in CSMA/CA and high throughput for the high network utilization in TDMA are provided. In this paper we show the operation of the ALS for the PLC network with repeaters. The PLC networks that require repeaters are usually large. Therefore, a large sized network with 141 nodes is used for the simulation in this paper. The delay and throughput dependencies vs. offered traffic are found. Recommendations for the network operation and ALS usage are given based on these results in the conclusions.