Research on Broadband Channel Characteristics and Hardware Testbed for Power Line Communication System

With the decision to construct the smart grids around China, the power line communications (PLC) on the low-voltage (LV) distribution networks have become one of the potential technologies to commute the information between the end users and the power provider. Comprehensive and well-founded knowledge of the LV power line channel is the foundation to establish realistic modeling of the channel characteristics. The growing power line communication (PLC) technology is providing new potential for emerging applications such as G3 and Prime. In this paper, we have proposed a OFDM based channel sounding test bed to measure PLC channel within frequency band 100 kHz-2 MHz. A souding signal for the PLC channel is designed and a time-domain measurement method for the time-varying PLC propagation is presented. The experimental results of PLC channel characteristics under different scenarios are and analyzed.