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Internet of Things on Power Line Communications: An Experimental Performance Analysis

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Book cover Smart Grids and Their Communication Systems

Part of the book series: Energy Systems in Electrical Engineering ((ESIEE))

Abstract

The giant information exchange enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm, i.e. by a “network of networks” of smart and connected devices, will likely exploit electrical lines as a ready-to-use infrastructure. Power Line Communications (PLC) have received a significant attention in the last decade, as electrical lines are not used as simple energy supply media, but as information carriers. Among the different aspects of PLC-based architectures, an interesting and important analysis have to be reserved to security aspects that should be adopted in similar infrastructures, having that they are crucial to deliver trustworthy and reliable systems and, hence, to support users relying on available services, especially in case in which they should be inherently secure at the physical level (e.g. against unauthorised signal removal/interruption and eavesdropping, since they are difficult and dangerous). Motivated by the relevant impact of PLC on IoT, in this chapter we investigate experimentally the performance of IoT systems on PLC in indoor environments, considering a vendor-provided application tool and a self-developed Java library. The experimental tests are carried out on both cold and hot electrical lines, evaluating both fixed-size and variable-length power lines. Our results show that IoT-oriented PLC can reach a throughput of 8 kbps on a 300-m cold line and of 6 kbps on a 300-m hot line. Further experimental efforts will be oriented to performance analyses in presence of the adoption of security measures.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Xiaolin Lu, Wonsoo Kim, Ariton Xhafa and Andrew Soukup (Texas Instruments Research Center, Dallas, TX, USA) for the fundamental support and useful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze, 181/A, 43124, Parma, Italy

    Luca Davoli, Luca Veltri & Gianluigi Ferrari

  2. Tesmec Automation Srl, Via Emilia Ovest 61, Frazione Rimale, 43036, Fidenza, Italy

    Umberto Amadei

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  1. Luca Davoli
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  2. Luca Veltri
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Correspondence to Luca Davoli .

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  1. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University, Nevşehir, Turkey

    Ersan Kabalci

  2. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Ömer Halisdemir University, Nigde, Turkey

    Yasin Kabalci

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Davoli, L., Veltri, L., Ferrari, G., Amadei, U. (2019). Internet of Things on Power Line Communications: An Experimental Performance Analysis. In: Kabalci, E., Kabalci, Y. (eds) Smart Grids and Their Communication Systems. Energy Systems in Electrical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1768-2_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1768-2_13

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