W H I T E

PA P E R
Texas Instruments

Il Han Kim and Anand Dabak David Rieken and Gordon Gregg
Aclara Technologies LLC

Introduction
This paper addresses power-line communication (PLC) for automated metering infrastructure (AMI) and automated meter reading (AMR) applications in North America, with specic focus on the physical layer. FCC regulations in the U.S. permit power line communication systems to use the band from 9 kHz to roughly 500 kHz. This paper presents channel and noise characteristics in this band, based on eld tests. The main challenge in communicating in this band is severe signal attenuation by service transformers. In rural areas, these transformers supply eight or fewer end points on average. Consequently, it is not economical to use a bridge device across each transformer; instead a router is placed on the medium voltage line for every few service transformers. Developers should consider the channel between a concentrator or a router on the medium voltage line (around 7.2 kV) and low-voltage (around 110V) end points connected to transformers some distance away on the medium voltage line. The signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) observed in such a link, and implications for signal design, are studied. Data is provided on all modem connection scenarios, including medium voltage to low voltage (MV LV), low voltage to medium voltage (LV MV), and medium voltage to medium voltage (MV MV). These results are intended to dene requirements for a PHY / MAC communication system that can support the AMI application in such channel conditions.

Evaluating the low-frequency power-line communications channel in Rural North America

Power line communications (PLC) is a promising technology for smart grid applications, particularly automated meter reading (AMR), demand response, SCADA communications, etc. To enable these applications, it is essential to establish connectivity between electricity meters installed in homes and concentrators placed in substations. The concentrator can be connected directly to the utility or a data collection center by a high-speed wireless, ber or coax backbone. In the U.S., the promise of PLC is strengthened by Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulations that permit the use of frequencies from 9 kHz to about 500 kHz. The transmit signal limits set by the FCC in this band are so loose that the only real limitation is the cost and size of communication modems that can be installed in meters. In Europe and China, each distribution transformer can support tens or hundreds of houses, but back in the U.S. and in Japan, each distribution transformer supports only a few houses, especially in rural areas. The two types of grid architectures are shown in Figure 1. To minimize the cost in those situations, the concentrator should reside on the medium voltage (MV) side and it is necessary for signals to cross each distribution transformer to establish communication between meters on the low voltage (LV) side and the concentrator. In this sense, using PLC in the 9-500 kHz band faces severe channel and noise conditions because of the need to cross the distribution transformer. To properly design a smart metering network on the U.S. grid and optimize the solution for Texas Instruments (TI) platforms, it is important to understand channel and noise characteristics when crossing distribution transformers. Therefore, appropriate channel and noise measurement procedures should be performed. This paper introduces U.S. grid architectures typically found in rural areas and provide channel and noise measurement across multiple sites for MV and LV lines. Having a channel model allows system designers to better understand the network performance for a given network topology and PLC modem deployment. Once the specication targets for data rates and coverage are understood,

Texas Instruments

the communication technology that satises these constraints can be chosen. Texas Instruments has developed a exible PLC development platform based on TIs C2000 microcontroller architecture that allows a designer to choose from different narrow-band OFDM communication standards available, including PRIME, G3 and IEEE P1901.2. The measurements done on the U.S. grid are critical for optimizing the Texas Instruments PLC solution.
MV line MV line

Concentrator
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LV line LV line ... LV line LV line

LV/MV transformer Concentrator

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Fig. 1 Grid architecture differences between (a) Europe/China and (b) U.S./Japan

Europe/China

Test setup

The test setup is shown in Figure 2. The concentrator is modeled by a Texas Instruments modem attached directly to the medium voltage (7200 volt line phase-to-neutral) using a coupler. The tests reported in this paper used a coupler with a passband of 35-150 kHz. Results in the MV LV direction can be signicantly improved by using a coupler with a passband spanning the 30-450 kHz band. Meters are emulated by connecting modems to the low-voltage end of various MV / LV transformers, connected at various distances from the concentrator.
x miles of medium voltage line

MV Coupler MV Modem

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MV/LV Transformer LV Modem Meter and Domestic/ Industrial

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Fig. 2 Schematic diagram of medium-low voltage test set up

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Low voltage LV side setup is shown in Figure 3. Texas Instruments modems and other measurement equipments (e.g., spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, etc.) are connected to actual meters. A laptop controls the modems to transmit and receive signals from MV sites.

Fig. 3 Photographs of various LV sites showing the connection between the meter and the modem. The Texas Instruments PLC modem platform is used for collecting data.

The exibility of the Texas Instruments platform allows developers to do different experiments on the platform for collecting various data. Noise was characterized by a combination of oscilloscope and spectrum analyzer captures, with the signal output from TIs OPA564 power amplier, PGA112 based analog front end used to build the integrated AFE 031 analog front end for PLC. To characterize the channel response, modems inject a chirp signal in the 40-450 kHz band. The resultant signal at the receiver end is captured on the scope or on the spectrum analyzer. When the transmission signal has all its frequency content below 90 kHz, the sampling frequency on the scope is 250 kHz. For all other signals, the sampling frequency is set to 2 MHz. In both cases, capture is done after preliminary anti-aliasing lters. Further details are given later in this paper. The purpose of these tests is to characterize noise on the MV and LV lines and also evaluate the channel characteristics between various MV-LV and MV-MV links. Noise Characteristics on medium (MV) and low voltage (LV) lines In this section, noise characteristics are discussed. We start by summarizing the main observations. Most of the energy in the noise is concentrated in short time-domain bursts which occur at the same period as the zero crossing of the mains AC cycle (8.33 ms in the U.S.). The noise is frequency selective, with an energy profile and power varying significantly different from one site to the next. The noise level at any given site is broadly constant, except for the occasional appearance of narrowband interferers.

Evaluating the low-frequency power-line communications channel in rural North America

June 2012

Texas Instruments

Time and Frequency Selectivity of Noise

The rst two conclusions above are illustrated by a time and frequency domain analysis of the noise observed at a low voltage site (Figure 4). The top plot shows the time domain energy with bursts of impulse noise occurring every 8.33 ms. While the bursts themselves are around 3 ms wide, focus on a 1 ms slice of each burst, capturing the maximum noise peaks within the burst. The bottom plot corresponds to breakup of the frequency domain energy between the 1 ms bursts (red curve) and the noise at other instances (magenta curve). In this evaluation, a single 1 ms burst centered on the maximum noise magnitude in the capture was identied. This was periodically repeated every 8.33 ms in either direction to get a window function with a burst duration of 1 ms, with bursts separated by 8.33 ms. The red curve is obtained by multiplying the captured noise (blue curve) by the window function thus obtained. Clearly, most of the frequency-domain energy occurs in narrow bursts and note that the noise level varies quite signicantly with frequency. In addition to spurs at 29 and 40 kHz, we also see a plateau of noise from 50-60 kHz. The sharpness of the plateau suggests transmission by another interfering source in this band.

Fig. 4 Time and frequency domain split of noise measured at a low voltage site

Site-to-site variation of noise

The spectrum of the ltered noise captured at various LV sites is shown in Figure 5. There is 10-15 dB of variation from site-to-site, with LV site 7 having the worst noise, probably due to its proximity to industrial establishments. In the gure, the transmitted signal level corresponding to a chirp signal of 2V root mean squared (rms) from 40-90 kHz is added as a reference.

Fig. 5 Noise spectra measured at various LV sites

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Time-varying nature of noise

In this evaluation, the noise statistics will stay mostly constant over the period of a few hours. However, some variations are found occasionally. One such example is illustrated in Figure 6, which shows the noise captured in a spectrum analyzer at the same location, but at two different times. During the rst capture (shown in red), there is strong narrowband noise from 52-58 kHz. However, that interference was not observed later during the same frequency range (blue curve). Note that the level of the noise outside this band seems similar in these two captures. The semi-static nature of noise is crucial, since it allows the transmitter and receiver to exchange information about the SNR and identify suitable sub-bands where high data rates can be achieved.

Fig. 6 Noise spectra at one LV site at two different time instances

Noise Characteristics on medium (MV) and low voltage (LV) lines

The main observations about MV side noise are listed below. The measured noise characteristics are similar. Similar to LV side noise, most of the MV noise energy is concentrated in short time-domain bursts which occur at the same period as the zero crossing of the mains AC cycle (8.33 ms). The noise is frequency selective with an energy prole and power varying signicantly between the two sites tested. At the same time, the noise characteristics vary slowly with time. Similar to the LV side noise, occasional narrowband interference appears on the MV side. In addition, increases in the signal level throughout the band are noticeable. On average, the MV side noise appears to be larger than the LV side noise by around 10 dB in the 30 90 kHz band. It is not clear if this is due to local effects or a more general trend.

Channel response For MV LV and LV MV communications

Next, we evaluate the measured channel response for MV LV and LV MV links. The measurement procedure is as follows: narrowband probe signals of about 200 Hz width are transmitted at a range of frequencies from 5 450 kHz. The transmitted and received signal levels are noted down. Concentrating energy in the narrow 200 Hz bandwidth enables the received signal level to rise above the noise oor at most frequencies, even if the attenuation is high. However, there are some frequencies where the attenuation level is so severe that the received signal level is below the noise oor. At these frequencies, it is only possible to get a lower bound on the channel attenuation.

Evaluating the low-frequency power-line communications channel in rural North America

June 2012

Texas Instruments

Clearly, the channel shows severe frequency-selective attenuation. Of particular interest is the variation of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) with frequency and link distance. This is plotted in Figure 7 and Figure 8, for a test case with underground MV cables. Specically, Figure 8 shows the received SNR when tones are transmitted from the MV site and observed at various LV sites (homes) in the neighborhood. The resultant SNR is shown as stem plots versus frequency for various MV-LV distances. It should be noted that these distances are effectively lengths of the underground MV cable, since the LV wire lengths connecting the meter to the transformer were quite low. For the same links, the SNR in the LV-MV direction is shown in Figure 8. For these measurements, 50 kHz chirps were transmitted at the various homes and observed at the MV site. Comparing the two gures, it is clear that the channel is asymmetric from MV LV and LV MV. Specically, on Figure 8 for LV MV communication, even with 50 kHz chirps signicant SNR was obtained in few sections of the frequency. On the other hand, Figure 7 shows that for MV LV communication, only a few frequencies have signicant SNR, even with sine wave transmission. It must be pointed out that this may well be a localized trend, and the reverse may hold in other locations and at other times.

Fig. 7 Stem plots for the SNRs obtained for the MV LV communication.

Fig. 8 SNR obtained for the LV MV communication.

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Channel Characteristics for MV MV communications

Finally, we provide channel measurement results for MV MV channels. This was measured by transmitting a chirp sequence from 50 450 kHz at one MV site and observing the result at another MV site some distance away. Two distances were tried 0.25 mi and 1.3 mi. For the 0.3 mile link, the tests also explore the effect of a 25 kVAr capacitor bank inserted between the transmitter and receiver as shown in Figure 9. As might be expected, the capacitor bank attenuates signals at higher frequencies. Specically, comparing the top two curves in Figure 10, the presence of a cap bank introduces a loss of about 20 dB in the signal. The same gure also contains the received signal at a distance of 1.3 miles from the transmitter. As seen on this plot, the attenuation on the MV line versus distance is not signicant. This shows that the MV line impedance is not high to attenuate signals. Previous analysis estimates less than 1 dB attenuation per km [2].

MV side transceiver

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Fig. 9 Schematic diagram of medium-medium voltage test set up

Summary

This paper presented channel and noise characteristics for power line communications (PLC) on the access network and based on eld tests in the United States. As noted in [1], the MV-LV transformer introduces severe frequency-selective attenuation. The location of the sub-bands with good SNR changes with the LV site location and they may not be symmetric between the MV LV and LV MV links. From the channel measurements, we can establish the benet of sub-band selection for transmitting signals. This allows the transmitter to concentrate its energy into a small sub-band to obtain the maximum distance coverage to the receiver.

Fig. 10 MV-MV signal levels at 0.25 and 1.3 miles, with and without capacitor banks in between.

Evaluating the low-frequency power-line communications channel in rural North America

June 2012

The measurements also showed that MV-MV communication has signicantly higher SNR than MV-LV communications, even in the presence of capacitor banks which reduce the high-frequency impedance on the MV line. The collected signal and noise data was used in optimizing the Texas Instruments modem solution for PLC. The collected data showed frequency selectivity/variation for the signal to noise ratio. The exibility of the Texas Instruments modem solution due to software, implementation on C2000 microcontroller platform allows the modication to the solution to encompass these frequency selective scenarios.

References

Aclara, Texas Instruments, G.hnem: Channel and Noise Measurements On the US Access Network, ITU-T SG15 10GS3-043R1, Geneva, Switzerland, Sep. 2010. D5 Pathloss as a function of frequency, distance and network, topology for various LV and MV European powerline networks, OPERA report

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