Tutorials

Tutorial title: Power Line Communications

Lecturer and Affiliation: Stefano Galli, Panasonic

Tutorial outline:
There is today growing interest in the prospects of re-using the existing power line infrastructure to provide broadband access to the home and LAN connectivity within the home or office. Besides the traditional access and home-LAN applications, power line communications (PLCs) also have other interesting applications. Today in the construction of vehicles, ranging from automobiles to ships, from aircraft to space vehicles, there is a power distribution system based on metallic conductors and this power distribution network may well perform double-duty, as an infrastructure supporting both power delivery and broadband digital connectivity. PLCs could also allow power utility companies to manage more efficiently their grid as well as to introduce novel post meter applications.
Considerable effort has been devoted recently to determining accurate channel models for the power line environment. Although there are today two main approaches to channel modeling (multipath and transmission-line models), there is no widely accepted channel model similar to those derived for mobile radio or telephone channels. To complicate things even further, particular wiring and grounding practices in residential and commercial buildings often make channel modeling a very challenging task. The consequence of the lack of a universally agreed upon channel model is that a solid communications and information theoretic approach to power line communications is still missing.
The tutorial will start by reviewing the major applications of PLCs (access, in-home, in-vehicle, smart grid, etc.), and pointing out world trends and market status. Moreover, a brief overview of standardization and PLC industry associations will be given. The course will continue addressing the existing channel models, with particular reference to recent results. Some inefficiencies and inaccuracies in capturing the physics of signal propagation, when particular topologies or particular wiring and grounding practices are taken into account, will also be pointed out. Finally, the suitability of modulation and coding techniques for the power line channel will be reviewed.
The topic of PLCs is a very interdisciplinary one so it is impossible to give an in-depth course on it in a half-day tutorial. The course, however, will give a rather complete overview of the major issues related to power line communications (PLCs).

The contents of the proposed tutorial are structured as follows:

1) Broadband applications today: access, in-home, in-vehicle, and beyond

2) Overview of IEEE standardization efforts and PLC industry associations

3) Main characteristics of power supply systems and of indoor wiring

4) The power line channel and its classical models

a. Transfer function

b. Noise

5) Recent results on the modeling of the indoor power line channel transfer function

a. Multi-conductor Transmission Line (MTL) theory approach

b. From MTL to the transfer function

c. Example of computation of a transfer function

6) Towards the definition of an "average" channel

7) Modulation & Coding for the power line channel

Information about the lecturer:

Stefano Galli received his M.S. degree and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" (Italy) in 1994 and 1998, respectively. He is currently a Lead Scientist in the Strategic R&D Planning Office of Panasonic in San Jose', California. His principal role is to research and develop techniques for Panasonic's next generation power line modems. He is also active in the standardization of PHY and MAC of power line communications within the IEEE P1901 Working Group, where he is co-Leader of the "Theoretical and Mathematical Models" Group, and co-author of Chapter 3 of the Informative Annex: "Theoretical/Mathematical Channel Models for BPL Systems." Prior to this position, Dr. Galli was a Senior Scientist in Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) from 1998 to 2006, where he worked in the Broadband Networking Research Department on several commercial and government projects. He also worked as a Teaching Assistant at the Info-Com Dpt. of the University of Rome from 1996 to 1998.

Dr. Galli is very active in the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). He is currently serving as Chair of the "Communications and Signal Processing" Technical Committee Cluster, reporting directly to the IEEE Vice President for Technical Activities, as Chair of the Technical Committee on "Power Line Communications", and he also serves on the On-Line Content Activity Board.

Dr. Galli has served as Technical Program Committee member in numerous conferences, has served as the General Co-Chair of the 2005 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), as Vice-Chair of the General Symposium of the 2006 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), as the Co-Chair of the General Symposium of the 2006 IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom), and he is currently serving as Chair of the Technical Program Committee of the IEEE International Symposium on Power Line Communications and its Applications (ISPLC), and of the 2007 IEEE International Conference on Access Networks (AccessNets). Dr. Galli also served as co-Guest Editor for the Feature Topic "Broadband is Power: Internet Access through the Power Line Network" (IEEE Communications Magazine, May 2003), and as the co-Guest Editor for the first IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) special issue on Power Line Communications (July 2006). Dr. Galli is currently serving as Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing Letters, Area Editor for Signal Processing for Communications.

Dr. Galli's research efforts are devoted to various aspects of xDSL systems, wireless/wired home networks, wireless communications, optical CDMA, and power line communications. His research interests also include detection and estimation, communications theory, and signal processing. He is an IEEE Senior Member, a reviewer for several IEEE journals and conferences, has published over 80 papers, and holds several international issued and pending patents.