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FCC to Approve Powerline

  • Thread starter Thread starter Web Buddy
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Web Buddy said:
Contrary to what the critics say there is no significant problems with PLC.

In spite of their wild claims of gross polution & planes falling out of the sky (Does it remind you of the Y2K scare mongerers) they have not managed to come up with a single case of interference from PLC. Given the scale of PLC deployment they should be able to come up with hundreds if they are to be belived.

I have to laugh when people dismiss Y2K these days. It was a genuine problem and the only reason it came to light and was fixed was because of "scare mongerers", to use your terminology. Please tell the IT teams that spent thousands of man-hours fixing legacy applications than ran financial institutions and national infrastructure that Y2K was a figment of someone's demented imagination.

BPL has not been deployed widely enough to produce widespread interference. The properties of the HF spectrum are well understood and the near field interference effects have been modeled and proven. Only an ostrich with his head in the sand can see no issues with BPL.
 
Well you knowledge on Y2K is as poor as on PLC. Y2K scare stories were almost entirely fiction. Countries that spent Nothing on Y2K had no more issues then those that spent Billions.



PLC is on its way whether you like it or not. It meet the regulations the same as any other product that is put on the market. The EU have approved PLC. It can be put on the market anywhere in the EEA without hinderance.


BT will in the next year or so be facing stiff competition from PLC.
PLC is the next generation Broadband. The tremandous technical challenges of PLC have been solved.

With luck PLC will be coming to your home soon.
 
Powerline is now widely deployed with in excess of 250,000 installations.


Come on where are all these cases of Interference. We never get an answer from people like you claiming it causes gross interference.

Where are all the complaints from Crieff, Cambletown, Stonehaven & Winchester ???

You will not answer the question because yoy know there are none.


Case for PLC proven I think.

I can come up with several cases of ADSL causing interference and even more for Wireless.


eli_the_ice_man said:
I have to laugh when people dismiss Y2K these days. It was a genuine problem and the only reason it came to light and was fixed was because of "scare mongerers", to use your terminology. Please tell the IT teams that spent thousands of man-hours fixing legacy applications than ran financial institutions and national infrastructure that Y2K was a figment of someone's demented imagination.

BPL has not been deployed widely enough to produce widespread interference. The properties of the HF spectrum are well understood and the near field interference effects have been modeled and proven. Only an ostrich with his head in the sand can see no issues with BPL.
 
The US presents different problems to those of Europe due to the different distribution network.

eli_the_ice_man said:
Oh really ? If that's the case, let's limit all BPL vendors to a maximum signal of -130 dBmW as this is the typical noise floor and will not cause any interference to licensed services. Since it's not that difficult with modern electronics, this shouldn't be a problem. It makes me wonder why BPL vendors are seeking to raise emissions limits in the US if they can operate below the noise floor as you suggest.

BTW, since you are familiar with electronics theory, can you explain the significance of my username in electronics theory ?
 
Captain_Cretin said:
I hate to say this but ALL electrical cables produce electromagnetic radiation; but these radiations are at specific frequencies and can be easily allowed for.
The magnetic field arround a high voltage power cable is so intense that it can light a flourescent light tube, hyterodyning signels onto the cable results in the equivilent of a massive transmitter, thousands of miles long and hundreds of feet high/wide.
As an example you can test, go drive under a high voltage powerline while listening to the car radio on AM.
What you hear is the sound of interference from millions of electrical motors eddying back through the national grid.
To make a transission signel work it has to be louder that that interference AND cover a much wider bandwidth to accomodate the ammount of data that needs to be transmitted, such a wide bandwidth will always cause problems for sensitive equipment near the powerline; for sensitive read :- PC's , Radios, monitoring equipment, guidence systems, Radar, pacemakers, etc.
Dedicated HiFI nuts already filter the mains entering their houses due to the distortions caused by the "noise" carried on the mains supply and I have trouble with a high frequency welder used nearby that causes problems with TV and radio reception.

You make a very good observation. Power lines are quite noisy today without BPL. The difference here is that inherent power line noise is 50 or 60 Hz (depending on you country) and harmonics of that. The various BPL technologies use energy above 1 MHz up to low VHF frequencies. There are few if any wireless communications taking place below 100 kHz, so while the noise generated by 50/60Hz energy is annoying to perhaps the AM broadcast band, it typically does not disrupt communications on higher HF frequencies with properly maintained lines. Power lines are suited to carry low frequency energy and the amount that they emit into the air compared to the amplitude of the energy being carried on the line is neglible.

On the other hand, with BPL the ratio of the energy emitted into the air compared to the energy carried is significant. Power lines inherently act as an antenna at these higher frequencies. The only way to reduce this emission is to lower the signal level on the line. This then increases the need for repeaters on the line to regenerate the signal, and the business model for BPL begins to fall apart.
 
Web Buddy said:
I can come up with several cases of ADSL causing interference and even more for Wireless.

Plz, you've failed to do so when asked before.

Surely if ADSL is causing problems, then roughly the same technology, at a stronger level, down more cabels and a higher power will surely cause more problems? No ammount of electric gizmos at either end can counteract that unless the power is dropped, or frequency is reduced.
 
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Web Buddy said:
The US presents different problems to those of Europe due to the different distribution network.

So in Europe they've figured out how to work below the noise floor ? I knew the schools in the US were bad, but I didn't know they were that bad ! (Hint: the noise floor has nothing to do with the distribution grid in this context)

Do you need a hint on the "ELI the ICE" man challenge ?
 
*Sigh* What a annoying debate. *IF* power line does produce 'gross pollution', please explain exactly what that is, in laymans terms, im not wading through tons of tech stuff.

And what are the bad effects of this pollution if it will exist?

People can find good and bad evidence on the net till the end of time (or until powerline rolls out or not), but I see no real reson for it not to go ahead. All this mention of pollution, and not a lot about what it will actually cause. Unless I missed it skimming through the techy stuff.
 
All electrical/electronic equipment produces emissions. Just because equipment is approved does not mean it does not produce interference.

Powerline uses power levels similar to ADSL. It does not need to be stronger as the distance it has to travel is considerably shorter, typically 300 metres compared with ADSL's distance of upto 6Km.

The main concern some people have with PLC is the frequency band the emissions are in. There are various very technical arguments over emission levels. There always the same arguments are still raging with DSL particularly VDSL. The view of the various regulatory bodies is that PLC meets all current requirements. Standards covering all forms of Broadband are currently in Draft and once formally ratified all Broadband systems will need to meet this new standard as well as the current LVD & EMC standards. If PLC causes intereference to other licenced equipment then it can be made to rectify the problem.

Robert Naylor said:
Plz, you've failed to do so when asked before.

Surely if ADSL is causing problems, then roughly the same technology, at a stronger level, down more cabels and a higher power will surely cause more problems? No ammount of electric gizmos at either end can counteract that unless the power is dropped, or frequency is reduced.
 
Web Buddy said:
All electrical/electronic equipment produces emissions. Just because equipment is approved does not mean it does not produce interference.

Powerline uses power levels similar to ADSL. It does not need to be stronger as the distance it has to travel is considerably shorter, typically 300 metres compared with ADSL's distance of upto 6Km.


You're compared apples to oranges here. All the DSL variants use twisted pair copper which is inherently self-shielding, has a fairly constant impedance, and is properly terminated. In other words, twisted pair is much more predicatable and it is suited for what it is carrying. The radiation from twisted pair is negligible.

Power lines on the other hand are not self-shielding, their impedance is unpredictable and varies significantly, and are not resitively terminated.


DSL uses a balanced signal on a twisted pair that is "conducted", for lack of a better term. BPL is a coupled RF signal.

And it's not that BPL doesn't have to go the same distance as DSL, it's that it can't. The power line is such a poor medium that any high frequency signal is attenuated and radiated very quickly.

The main concern some people have with PLC is the frequency band the emissions are in. There are various very technical arguments over emission levels. There always the same arguments are still raging with DSL particularly VDSL. The view of the various regulatory bodies is that PLC meets all current requirements. Standards covering all forms of Broadband are currently in Draft and once formally ratified all Broadband systems will need to meet this new standard as well as the current LVD & EMC standards. If PLC causes intereference to other licenced equipment then it can be made to rectify the problem.

I'm not sure where these raging arguments are over DSL emissions. I'd have little or no problem with using the frequency ranges found in BPL over twisted pair, again, because it is self-shielding. DSL providers ironically can't have the sloppy emissions that BPL does because of crosstalk. Crosstalk is signals "bleeding" from one pair to another, and it degrades signals and lessens the effective distance. BPL carriers on the other hand don't have to worry about crosstalk wrecking their network.
 
Bartman said:
*Sigh* What a annoying debate. *IF* power line does produce 'gross pollution', please explain exactly what that is, in laymans terms, im not wading through tons of tech stuff.

And what are the bad effects of this pollution if it will exist?

People can find good and bad evidence on the net till the end of time (or until powerline rolls out or not), but I see no real reson for it not to go ahead. All this mention of pollution, and not a lot about what it will actually cause. Unless I missed it skimming through the techy stuff.

Sorry the debate has gotten technical, but when others try to play technical and the core problem with BPL is its technical foundation, it's hard to avoid it. I won't argue the business model of BPL as it's not my field of expertise. Others on this board are venturing into areas where they lack knowledge. I also won't dispute the dire need for broadband.

So I'll try to provide a layman's view of this, and will smack myself if I start throwing in acronyms :-)

Power lines were designed to carry very low frequency energy and deliver power, not data. The power is carried very well and if lines are properly maintained, they deliver most of the energy to the destination. Some is emitted into the air, but this amount is neglible compared to the amount of power delivered.

The data carried in BPL is much, much higher in frequency. In simple terms, this higher frequency would prefer to "jump off" the line and propagate through the air rather than stay on the line. This causes the data signal to be lost and have to be regenerated periodically on the line to make it stronger.

This "emitting" of the data signal in and of itself is not harmful. The problem is the frequencies that BPL uses and emits. The emissions will affect a band called HF which extends from 1 to about 30 Mhz, and the lower part of VHF 30 Mhz up to around 80 Mhz.

Internationally there are licensed occupants of this band using it for long distance worldwide communications. This varies from country to country, but basically it consists of military, government, maritime, aviation, shortwave broadcast, and amateur radio stations.

The HF band exhibits some properties unlike any other radio spectrum. The distance you can communicate varies significantly with geomagnetic and solar conditions. Also, the amount of power required to communicate varies. With the right conditions you can use a miniscule amount of power such as 1 watt (1/100th the power of your typical lightbulb) to communicate around the world.

The effectiveness of the power lines in radiating interfering signals in a band that has a properties like HF means that even low signal levels emitted could disrupt communications. Some BPL signals are very wide, meaning they blanket large portions of spectrum with crackles, pops, or continual whining noises. The current occupants of the HF band need "quietness" as they often receive weak signals.

Current occupants of the HF band cannot be relocated due to the cost, international treaties, and the specific properties of it that are required by the services there.

There's also the potential that "bad spots" that inevitably occur in power lines due to weather and poor maintenance will create radio "mixing" products. This is a phenomenom were radio signals "mix" together to produce new radio signals. The result is the signal which was originally just in the HF band is now extending into high frequencies and would affect public safety and local aviation frequencies, to name a few.

Again, this is a very simplified explanation and I've taken some liberties in giving radio signals human traits, but I hope this enables you to understand the technical issues better.
 
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JUst because Powerlines were designed to carry power does not prevent there use for Broadband.

You could make the same argument with DSL. Telephone lines were designed for low frequency audio and not Broadband.

The regulatory bodies are happy with PLC and they have far more expertise available to them.
 
Watch who your calling uninformed and none technical!

Anyway back to the point.

Your need for high-speed Internet does not outweigh the need for international wireless communications.

Oh right, so then some interference in, say, a town of 4000 people in the country (where I live) will effect international wireless communications will it? ;)

Yes, new products are released everyday that do things previously impossible as you mention. None of these break the laws of physics as you imply.

I did not imply at any time that any new products break the laws of physics (though I would not assume that is impossible so quickly). What I said is that I will not simply accept that you know enough about this subject to know that PLC cannot work without high interference levels. Now before you counter with "well I don't think you know enough ect ect" I haven't claimed that PLC is fine and has no interference problems. I am simply willing to give it a chance, as I said, if interference is such a big problen then it will never be used. Or at least never used in area's where it could be a problem.

BTW, since you are familiar with electronics theory, can you explain the significance of my username in electronics theory ?

I realise this wasn't aimed at me but I'll comment on it anyway. ELI the ICE man is a mnemonic for the phase relations of current and voltage.
 
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Teasy said:
I realise this wasn't aimed at me but I'll comment on it anyway. First, stop being a big headed ok. Secondly ELI the ICE man is a mnemonic for the phase relations of current and voltage. [/B]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be big headed. I'm just trying to prove a point that someone arguing with me is way outside his field of expertise. Unfortunately, people on the Internet tend to take the word of the most vocal, however wrong, as gospel. I'm trying to be a voice of reason in this discussion. The original post in this thread was wrong. There's been several other wrong statements that have been made.

You win the prize, BTW ! :-)

I don't mind giving BPL a chance, but the industry isn't being open and providing information and measurements. They are pushing this with marketing and politics.
 
webbuddy, I'm sorry but you are wrong, there is a very big difference between the very low voltage/microampage telephone networked ADSL cable and a medium voltage/high current power cable.
If you really want to know I suggest you go down to your local college and sign up for a City&Guilds or BTEC in Electronics.
 
eli_the_ice_man

Ok, its fine to be skeptical obviously. You might very well be right (as much as I hope your not), after all I'm far from an expert on this subject. I just wish you would not be SO down on this technology. I don't think saying things like "PLC is doomed" is giving it much of a chance.

P.S. I've edited the big headed comment out of my post since it was a bit unfair.
 
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PLC has had chance after chance and each time it has failed, ultimately the basic technology is flawed and no amount of hand waving by the PR Bunnies will fix the problem.
 
PLC has a clearly documented and long track record of causing huge amounts of interference. The measurements detailed on page 15 of the presentation here;

http://www.npl.co.uk/electromagnetic/rfmff/tech-transfer/freemet/meeting_4/trevor_clarkson.pdf

by the Radiocommunications Agency of the Crieff system shows the interference level to be so high that the entire shortwave spectrum will be denied to other users who have no alternative.

The key point is that there are many alternative and better ways to bring broadband to folks to don’t have it. For the existing shortwave users there is no alternative.

Also the shortwave is global and PLC pollution from the U.K. can and will disrupt communications around the globe.
 
Web Buddy said:
JUst because Powerlines were designed to carry power does not prevent there use for Broadband.

You could make the same argument with DSL. Telephone lines were designed for low frequency audio and not Broadband.

The regulatory bodies are happy with PLC and they have far more expertise available to them.

I've taken the argument beyond the fact that power lines weren't designed for broadband. They are inherently unsuited for data, regardless of the design goals.

Phone lines were originally strung wires, much like power lines are today. It was discovered that the twisted pair was better and that's what we use today. It scales much, much, better than strung wires, and more importantly it shields itself. It is suited for communications. The engineers that discovered twisted pair most likely had no idea that digital signals lie ahead, but the basics such as bandwidth and frequency response were known. When digital came along (T1/E1), it was determined that the frequency response characteristics of the twisted pair allowed for a higher bandwidth signal to be carried, with some minor modifications. But the basic twisted pair had the characteristics that allowed for this to happen.

Power networks have an entirely different goal -- delivery of low frequency power with minimal loss. The constuction of power lines has evolved with power delivery in mind and not communications. While you could theorectically change power cable construction to carry high frequencies effectively, it would be cost prohibitive at this point (and leads one naturally to a fiber solution :-)

Using your logic, we could pursue using phone lines for power distribution. Such lines were designed to carry 48 volts, but let's say for the sake of discussion that we could increase that to 100 volts. A house normally consuming 25 amps at 220 volts (normal utility service) would attempt to draw 55 amps through a 100 volt phone line. The phone line would instantly melt.

I'm in favor of dual uses of infrastructure when it makes sense for everyone involved. Using petroleum pipelines for carrying fiber is a prime example of this.

I'm not dismissing power lines as a broadband medium just because they were designed to carry power -- they don't have the characteristics necessary to do it right. Attempting to carry data on power lines is like delivering water through dirty murky pipes that leak most of the water everywhere, and at the very end there is a water purifier. Sure, you get clean water at the end, but you're flooding the neighborhood and wasting water.
 
The Powerline technology has moved on as does technology in general. Powerlines are now suitable for Broadband communications as the various trials have proved.
The challenge is not the technology, although there is as with any new technology scope to improve it further, but is for it to prove itself commercially. Clearly this presents a challenge as most telecom markets are dominated by an incumbent Telco. Fortunatly the EU is very supportive of Powerline and see's Powerline as a way of breaking the current telco's monopoly of the market.

It is the commercial issues that are the challenge. The EMC issues are resolved.

Critics keep quoting massive interference but have yet to come up with a single documented case of interference by Powerline. I think that shows quite clearly that this is not an issue.

I am sure that you can look forward to Powerline coming to your area soon where you will be able to see the benefits of it for yorself.
 
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