Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers to Establish Broadband Over Powerline Standard
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2010 – Broadband over Powerline (BPL) will finally have an established standard. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has been working on a standard since 2005 but only recently has unable to come to agreement.
WASHINGTON, June 24, 2010 – Broadband over Powerline (BPL) will finally have an established standard. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has been working on a standard since 2005 but until recently had been unable to come to agreement.
A Graphic Display of how BPL works from HowStuffWorks.com
The disagreement has mainly been around creating a standard that will allow competing companies with different frequencies do not cancel each other out over the wire. BPL works by sending a broadband signal over an electrical signal, a modem then coverts the signal from the electrical outlet to Ethernet. The graphic on the left shows a basic distribution.
Approval for this IEEE standard is targeted for September 2010, but a comment period has been set through August.
According to Jean-Philippe Faure, chair of the P1901 working group representing Panasonic, more than 90 companies participated.
“It creates transmission collisions if systems using different BPL technologies are connected to the same power lines,” Faure said. “The co-existence protocol prevents collisions by setting minimum rules that all systems using any kind of technology obey for transmitting. This mechanism is simple and compatible with all BPL technologies.”
