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Gigabit Transfer Rates Over Power Lines?
nomrniceguy writes "Penn State engineers, Pouyan Amirshahi and Mohsen Kavehrad, estimated in a research paper released Wednesday that their system could deliver data at close to one gigabit per second over medium-voltage electrical lines in ideal conditions, with speeds of hundreds of megabits per second available to home users.
Their system would uses repeaters placed every one kilometer, (0.62 miles) and requires power lines to have been modified to reduce interference with the data signals. The engineers said their estimates were based on computer models, and that the data speeds available in a real-world version would depend on how many repeaters a power company used."
When they have a real world proof of concept, then I'll care...
uhuh. And this will likely be available only in the largest metro areas first, then 5 years later in the suburbs of said metro area.. so I'm looking at a good 15 years till this gets out to the woods where I live. Oh well, I guess I should just be happy that I have cable modem available.
Don't Tread on Me
by the time they finish all the testing and modifying the existing power line, gigabit wifi will be readily available.
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
To rig up all the shielding and the repeaters every kilometer. Sounds really expensive
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
so what I'm reading here is that if this were actually implemented ITRW, it would be a massively expensive project that would ultimately give end users bandwith that might be keen competition for AOLs 56k dialup service - of course in the tradition of networking sales lingo this would be advertised as "gigabit powerline connection speed"
- "that's not a fuse, that's my firewall!"
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Instead of spending all the money to rig up all the power lines to support this technology, and potentially causing substantial problems with interference to radio communication (particularly amateur), why not just spend the money on a stronger fiber infrastructure, which presumably can support a great deal more bandwidth than this, and doesn't have the problems with causing or recieving such interference. Why not keep our data and power networks separate, and optimize both for their specific purpose?
...but one can only hope that as we gradually update our (america's) power infrastructure, things like this will be added. However, one wonders how many regional power outages we will need before we do this... but until we do begin a massive overhaul of the grid, something like this will only be an added benefit of such an overhaul.
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This would defintely be more expensive in the long run compared to fiber. Also there are too many unknowns. Close to one gigabit per second? How close? What about the "ideal" conditions? Are we talking about weather conditions, wire conditions, ??? Requires that power lines be modified? I'm sure the electric companies are just itching for a reason to replace all of those lines.
Fiber is already here. It's faster, immune to all interference, and constantly getting cheaper. Wait, did I mention that fiber's faster?
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Months? How about years? I first head about this in 1997. If you have to modify all the power lines, what's the point? The idea is to be able to use the existing system. It looks more and more like a pipe dream.
You've probably seen those little cylindrical doodads on cables for game controllers, power supplies, and so forth. Those are ferrite cores to keep radio noise from escaping from cheap, crappy electronics. If they aren't used, the tiny (millivolts) stray signals from the digital chips will stroll down the wire and fly off into space. The signals in power line communication are the same, except that you can't filter them out because the whole point is that they travel down the full length of the wire to deliver information.
I do not see the cost effectivness of broadband over power lines.
It is not there; neither in rural or metropolitan markets. I work for a broadband company that is a subsidiary of a large power utility. Our nickname for BPL is "BTBW" (broadband over twisted barbed wire). The point being, you can put a signal across most anything -- as long as you do not care about speed nor interference! Your power lines are already carrying low-speed data in many cases for in-line transmission management. The problem with radiofrequency physics is that of how antennas work. Ask your local amateur radio friend about long-wire antennas and you'll soon discover that power lines are essentially the same thing. Wonder why your AM radio acts funny when you drive under a high voltage line? Imagine if that line wasn't just emitting 60 Hz, but everything MF to low-VHF?
Shortwave radio would cease to exist. Amateur radio HF would be gone. All the communication going on right now for the tsunami assistance efforts would be shot - causing many people to die. AM radio would be useless at night and anywhere outside of the city during the day. But hey, some power company CEO might be happy.
BPL causes so much interference that it is useless in urban areas. In rural areas, it still interfers , but now has the disadvantage of being more expensive than simply running fiber out to the residence (at $17.5K/mile for rural fiber deployments).
Really, because the cost of rural fiber is less, a power company would be smarter to use existing facilities and deploy fiber along the same poles. Now you have much greater capacities than BPL will ever provide, are using existing right-of-ways to reduce costs significantly, etc.
Innovations like fiber over ground - where the fiber optic is carried on the top ground cable of the transmission system; ground wires are necessary to take lightning strikes away from the transmission line, but do not affect the fiber inside - make this easy for us. And we can go 40-50 miles depending upo the fiber mode used without repeaters, not 600-900 feet or less per BPL. Best of all, it is cheaper than BPL and does not interfer with the entire radiofrequency spectrum.
So ask yourself when you hear a power utility talking about BPL why they would do it. Some seem to think the investors might be fooled by the idea of converting an old power line into a broadband carrying line with little effort (I have a sky hook to sell these people). The reality is that until we change the laws of physics, an antenna will act like an antenna, and that is what a power line is. BPL will be horribly expensive and cause other RF services to cease to exist.
Run, don't walk, from power utilities that talk up BPL.
Come up with a better way to get to the house and maintain the speed of fiber while holding on to the reliability and simplicitity of copper.
What about the CT coupler that bypasses the transformer, one short or glitch in that thing and you will have a 7,2000 volt jolt hitting the circuit breaker in your home. Sure it should burn your fuses, just after it fries half the electronics in your home. How healthy will these BPL systems be after being weathered and beaten for 10 or 20 years? Even the brand new equiped, closely monitored systems in good weather have failed. The future does not look good for BPL.
That was sort of my thought.. If they have to go through the trouble of physically working along the entire path, then why not just bring a new line along that path and forget the whole thing?
It's not the technology....
It's politics.
The government through an act in congress mandates that ALL homes have phone and electricity lines pulled to them no matter (just about) where they are.
There is no requirement for either cable or fiber. As long as this situation remains the same, I can pretty much bet that anybody that can't get cable will NEVER get broadband! The little copper wire for phone, big electric wire and satelite is all the options they will ever have.
Unless a national fiber inititive is done through congress where the same requiements for electricity and phone are applied to network fiber cable, a large part of the U.S. will probably be bandwidth starved.
There is of course the hope of some exotic wireless technology..maybe
Parent post qualifies as an excellent example of when to post anonymously.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Here is some food for thought on BPL:
1. BPL signals will pollute ANY chunk of spectrum it uses. This is already evident in the 2-80 MHz bands that it's currently being tested in. The same thing would happen even if they shifted it to work in the 2-5 GHz band, the interference issue would still exist.
2. BPL CAN be interfered with, transmissions from any RF source be it CB, HAM or Public service can disrupt BPL service. How irate would you get if your BPL service was constantly disrupted by my LEGAL transmissions.
3. Placing RF coupling capacitors at the transformer to allow BPL signals into your home. NO THANKS. Now your otherwise "clean" AC power is now going to be filled with all kinds of other noise as well, arcing insulators / transformers, your neighbors arc welder etc come to mind. And let's not forget about lightening strikes and large static discharges.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick