Progress Report

Last Updated on 12/12/96

The following is the working plan toward further development of the Home Networking Project:

As most of the research work is oriented toward the power line physical layer, a study of the ac power line as a communication media is in order. Some references relevant to this subject have been researched and a list of them can be found in the bibliography provided . For more information on this subject, please refer to the Power Line characteristics document.

From the references provided, a study of the frequency spectrum on the PL resulting from the signal injection of each of the technologies, first separately and then combined, is performed. Also, study the effect of power line contamination (due to devices such as baby monitors, PL intercoms, PL telephone extensions and PL cable TV extensions)on these signals is suggested. Proper test equipment is not available, but a practical study with real life measurements will be tried with data adquisition boards and software analysis tools.

Extrapolate the results of these experiments using simulation tools such as the EMTP or SPICE simulators.

Start a detailed analysis of the protocol to determine the best method of implementing a general purpose gateway between the three technologies. Is it better to try to implement this gateway at the application layer level or maybe at the network layer? An idea of defining an X-10 context in CAL (Common Application Language) is being explored. It will make X-10 command issuing by a CEBus controller a more straight forward process.