UPA’s vision of Coexistence for Powerline Communications

ISPLC 2006 - FloridaChano Gómez – DS2

Introduction UPA was established by the founding members in May 2004 as an international

non-profit trade association. The UPA was founded on the common belief of a set of leading companies who

shared the vision of a PLC landscape based on: World-wide standards for power line communications; Integrating PLC into the telecommunications landscape Providing consistent, credible and unifying communication on PLC; Taking a universal view of the market and embracing all applications whether

access, in-home, multimedia or other PLC application; Ensuring speed of deployment of PLC worldwide.

UNIVERSAL meaning•Scope: Access and Home-networking, Coexistence and Interoperability•Worldwide: America, Europe and Asia represented. •Companies represented: manufacturers, utilities, chip providers, systems integrators…

Facts

Members of UPA include: AcBel Polytech Inc. Ambient Corporation Commax Corinex Communications Current Technologies International DS2 EDF Duke Energy Itochu Corporation Ilevo (Schneider Electric Powerline Communications) PCN Technology ST&T Sumitomo Electric Industries Tecnocom Telekom Research and Development SDN BHD Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH TOYO Network Systems.

UPA Chairman of the Board Eric Morel, ILEVO (Schneider company) eric.morel@upaplc.org

Web site www.upaplc.org

Why is there a need for coexistence at all?

In an ideal world, everybody would use the same standard. In the real world, different organizations have designed

their systems for specific applications, with different requirements, different cost constraints, etc.

The result is that each one has designed its technology in a different and incompatible way.

It’s difficult to agree on a single common standard, specially if each technology has an installed base and has already invested a large amount of money in product development.

In the long term, the work of organizations like ETSI PLT and/or IEEE 1901 will create a single standard for PHY and MAC for all applications of powerline communications.

In the short term there is a need for coexistence mechanisms that allow different technologies, based on different PHY/MAC layers, to share power lines.

History of the UPA Coexistence specifications Dec 2004 Kick off of the Coexistence WG of UPA

Jan 2005 Description of network electricity networks topologies. Worldwide scope.

Mar 2005 First draft

Apr 2005 Performance simulation

May 2005 Last draft

Jul 2005 Approval by the BoD and PublicationImprovement phase started

Coexistence issues addressed by UPA

In-Home/Access issues Between In-Home devices and Access equipment

– in the same customer home– between neighbors

In-Home/In-Home– in the same customer home– between neighbors

Coexistence main requirements

Provide a fair and balanced sharing of resources between one Access system and several In-home

systems between In-home systems (up to 3 different systems at the

same time) Can be implemented with any technology at low cost &

low impact on performance minimize the additional hardware/software needed for

adding coexistence to an existing implementation compatible with the QoS requirements of the different

systems Work with the most usual topologies Optimize the use of resources

activation limited to local area where interference takes place. No impact on the remaining parts of the networks.

re-use resources not used by idle nodes

Different Approaches to Coexistence

Time-division approach Frequency-division approach Both have advantages and disadvantages for specific

scenarios UPA supports both methods, so that the best one can be

chosen in each specific case

Coexistence

transmission area

interference area

Networks taking turns

Coexistence

transmission area

interference area

access in-home

Networks sharing frequency

UPA mechanism is very flexible

It takes benefit of both FDM and TDM

A dynamic FDM-scheme provides isolation between Access devices and In-Home devices.

Each system manages its QoS independently When only one system is installed, it can use the whole

frequency band. A dynamic TDM is used between In-Home systems.

Different networks take turns for usage of the channel Bandwidth is shared dynamically based on QoS

requirements of each network and application. TDM between In-Home and Access systems is also

supported for those scenarios where it is convenient.

Conclusions

UPA coexistence specification is a flexible approach to the issue of coexistence both in the case of access vs in-home and in the case of in-home vs in-home networks.

UPA coexistence specification supports both frequency-division and time-division coexistence mechanisms

UPA coexistence specification was published on Jul 2006, and can be freely downloaded from UPA’s web-site [http://www.upaplc.org]

UPA is open to discuss the specification with other industry organizations and is also contributing to official standardization bodies like IEEE and ETSI.