Characteristics of Indoor Power Line Channels in the Frequency Range 50 - 500 kHz

Power line communication (PLC) is still of great interest concerning home automation. Usually, only low data rates in the range of some tens of kilobits per second are required for this purpose. Depending on national standards, frequency ranges up to 490 kHz may be used according to regulation issues since more than 15 years for this kind of application. However, existing communication systems are still suffering from technological deficiencies. This paper deals with the examination of typical channel properties like access impedance, amplitude response and the noise scenario in the frequency range between 50 - 500 kHz. We introduce a measurement tool that has been developed to measure these properties in particular. Furthermore, the paper describes the measurement procedure, discusses the results and presents appropriate models for the channel properties of importance