11
POWER-LINE COMMUNICATIONS AND SMART GRID
With the ever-increasing demand for high-speed data communication and its quality of service (QoS), broadband connectivity to and within the home has been available to consumers through various technologies. Among those technologies, power-line communications (PLC) is becoming an excellent candidate for providing broadband connectivity as it exploits an already existing infrastructure. This infrastructure is much more pervasive than any other wired alternatives, and it allows virtually every line-powered device to take advantage of value added services that are being developed. Therefore, PLC may be considered as the technological enabler of a variety of future applications that probably would not be available otherwise [1].
PLC is not new. At a very early stage of its development, the first reported applications of PLC were remote voltage monitoring in telegraph systems and remote meter readings. Today the interest in PLC spans several important applications: broadband Internet access, indoor wired local area networks (LANs) for residential and business premises, in-vehicle data communications, smart grid applications (advanced metering and control, real-time energy pricing, peak shaving, mains monitoring, distributed energy generation, etc.), and other municipal applications, such as traffic light and street lighting control [2].
In this chapter, an overview of power-line communications (PLC) and smart grid is provided ...
