Topband: Broadband over power lines - IEEE Communications 2003 May

[G3JAG]

It is no surprise that interference concepts are foreigh to the thinking of 
BPL advocates. The driving force is purely commercial, namely signing up new 
customers for services that most folk need like an extra hole in the head. 
In UK they are desperate to find subscribers for expensive broadband when most 
users are better served by a simple pay-as-you-go dialup connection that 
gives the user real control over cost. How long I will be able to get away 
with paying only for a brief local phone call is anyone's guess, but its not 
very profitable for the service providers or for the telecom companies.

My guess is that BPL will certainly be no cheaper than other Internet access 
routes, and with a bit of luck it will cause the providers with a lot more 
technical  problems than telephone, cable or satellite..

On the technical front, we already have electronic smog here from noisy 
electrical installations, like the overhead pickup line for the high voltage 
Manchester electric tramway with its regenerative braking ... trains every 
six minutes 18 hours a day, not to mention the numerous domestic devices that 
arc away for minutes at a time. No-one cares enough about those, so it will 
be easy to convince the smurfs in Government that "a tiny bit more QRN does 
not matter - and is'nt HF radio completely obsolete now we have gone digital 
and have the Internet, mobile phones etc ???" 

We face an uphill battle. Personally I am thinking about ways of using the 
power line as MY 160m antenna system...... No zoning issues - the lines are 
buried, but my signal should reach even more of the neighbours than the one I 
annoy at present.
And that is perhaps our best shot. If BPL can be shown to seriously affect 
some important public services, like medical equipment in hospitals, then 
maybe someone will see sense.

John G3JAG

On Saturday 21 June 2003 23:16, Eric Scace K3NA wrote:
>    For those interested, I now have PDFs available of five articles that
> appeared in the 2003 May issue of "IEEE Communications Magazine" on
> broadband over power line.  The articles are:
>
> 1.  Guest editorial
> 2.  Physical and regulatory constraints for communication over the power
> supply grid. 3.  Coding and modulation for a horrible channel.
> 4.  Advanced signal processing for power line communications.
> 5.  Demonstration of the technical viability of PLC systems on medium- and
> low-voltage lines in the US. 6.  Broadband PLC access systems and field
> deployment in European power line networks.
>
>    Only the second article discusses radio interference issues to any
> degree; articles (1) and (3) making passing reference but RFI issues are
> clearly not in the forefront of the engineering decisions in choosing
> coding/modulation techniques.  The technical discussions in (4) through (6)
> ignore the issue altogether except to consider interference between
> adjacent BPL systems.
>
>    The tenor of the articles is consistent with other observations: the
> proponents of BPL are not aware of the potential damage their systems will
> do to other uses of the radio spectrum.
>
> -- Eric K3NA
>
>
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