Design of Bidirectional Coupling Circuit for Broadband Power-Line Communications
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Journal of Electromagnetic Analysis and Applications, 2012, 4, 162-166 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jemaa.2012.44021 Published Online April 2012 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/jemaa) Design of Bidirectional Coupling Circuit for Broadband Power-Line Communications Syed Samser Ali1, Amitabha Bhattacharya2, Dipak Ranjan Poddar3 1Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Durgapur Institute of Advanced Technology & Management, Durgapur, India; 2Department of Electronics & Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India; 3Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. Email: [email protected] Received February 14th, 2012; revised March 12th, 2012; accepted March 24th, 2012 ABSTRACT This paper deals with the design of bidirectional coupler for broadband power line communication and the impedance matching technique with the power line. This coupler can be used for both transmitting and receiving the data, acting as transceiver. The impedance mismatching problem is also solved here using line trap circuit. The coupler circuit is capa- ble of transmitting or receiving modulated signals with carrier frequency of 15 MHz which can be used for domestic as well as distribution power networks. Laboratory prototype tested using power line network consists of electrical house- hold appliances and results show that the circuit is able to facilitate bidirectional band pass transmission. Keywords: Coupling Circuits; Line Trap Circuit; Broadband 1. Introduction here can facilitate bidirectional communication. Power lines may be a cheap and good networking option 2. PLC System in the sense that they are almost a universally present infrastructure. The conventional power line can be effec- A typical PLC system is made up of traditional power tively utilized for broadband communication. The low line, bidirectional coupling circuits and line trap circuits. voltage (LV) electrical power distribution network, The coupling circuits which act as transceivers (trans- which is a widely spread network with distribution trans- mitters and receivers) are needed for generation and re- formers with many loads connected in parallel, presents covery of the high frequency message signal. The the most efficient medium for data and voice communi- method used for coupling the signal to the power line and cations such as fast Internet access and telephone service. decoupling from the power line is based on Differential The high voltage (11 KV) electricity distribution network Mode Coupling that involves the live wire as one termi- can be applicable for this purpose, which can be an al- nal and the neutral wire as another terminal [4]. The cou- ternative of highly expensive optical fiber network. pling circuits are used to couple the modulated carrier Coupling circuits for power line communication signal onto and from the power line without compromis- (PLC) are available with pass band of maximum 150 ing the power frequency 50 Hz insulation level. The PLC KHz which includes CENELEC B, CENELEC C and modem along with the bidirectional coupling circuits at CENELEC D bands [1,2]. If power line communication the sending end (i.e. after trap circuit) will convert the system is designed for higher frequencies it will be the information into digital data packets which are digitally cheapest medium for high speed internet access. Cur- modulated with a higher carrier frequency (5 MHz - 15 rently internet access using power line network is in the MHz). The modulated signal is then coupled on the 50Hz focus of various research activities [3]. The transmis- power system network and hence being transmitted. At sion of high speed data through power distribution net- the receiving end, the information will be retained by a work will be possible if such a coupling circuit is suc- demodulation process. The impedance of a power line is cessfully designed. very low. Sometimes it reduces to a few ohms. So, there Section 2 presents architecture of typical PLC System is a chance of mismatch between the coupler impedance while Section 3 & 4 present and explain designs of Cou- and power line impedance. For that a line trap circuit is pler and Line Trap circuit. Section 5 represents experi- required to trap the low impedance power signal and of- mental results which show the coupler circuit presented fer high impedance to the coupled high frequency signal. Copyright © 2012 SciRes. JEMAA Design of Bidirectional Coupling Circuit for Broadband Power-Line Communications 163 The architectures of typical PLC systems with trap cir- 0.001 μF 0.001 μF L cuits are shown in Figures 1 and 2. 3. Design of Coupler Power 100μH Data Line MOV 100μH 50Ω Zener Input Diode (4.7 v) The coupler is the heart of the PLC system. The low voltage coupler shown in Figure 3 is suitable for user- end distribution network (220 V - 440 V). High voltage N coupler shown in Figure 4 can be used for coupling data Ferrite Transformer before step down transformers (11 KV - 220 V) i.e. on Figure 3. Low voltage bidirectional coupler circuit. the 11 KV distribution network. The same coupler circuit is used for both transmitting and receiving data. For Ls Cs LIVE (R) L L transmitting data live-neutral is connected to power line Data and data input side is connected to low voltage data MOV Zener Diode Input source. Similar connection is followed for receiving data. C C LIVE (B) For transmitting data through coupler circuit, data flows Ls Cs Ferrite Transformer Ferrite Transformer from data input side to live-neutral and data flows in re- Figure 4. High voltage bidirectional coupler circuit. verse direction for receiving data. Transformer coupling circuits are extensively used in with cutoff frequency 1 MHz. This filter blocks 50 Hz power line communication system because transformers and other noise signals present in power line but allow provide galvanic isolation from power line and act as passing the message signals of higher frequency (5 MHz - limiter when saturated by high voltage transient. The 10 MHz). In addition, parallel resonant circuits can be transformer with turn’s ratio 20:1 is made of ferrite core used here to improve overall bypass effect. Back to back because ferrite core introduces fewer losses at higher zener diodes are used here to clamp the voltage transients frequency than other cores. The combination of series at the secondary side of the transformer and limiting any capacitors and parallel inductors forms a high pass filter high voltage that may creep into the data circuit. A resis- tor is connected in parallel with the capacitor to dis- L ive Line Line Live charge the capacitor in order to minimize the hazard of Netural Trap Trap Netural high voltage peaks caused by the stored charge in ca- pacitor. The metal oxide varistor (MOV) protects the circuit from any incoming surge from the power line; Line Line basically the metal oxide varistor provides protection Coupler Coupler against very large transients on the power line. The high voltage coupler which can work up to 11 KV Transmitted or Transmitted or for three phase lines is shown in Figure 4. The main Received Signal Received Signal properties of this high voltage coupler are that the cou- Figure 1. Architecture of typical low voltage PLC system. pler is connected between the two phases of the power line and the secondary side of the second transformer is grounded. Two ferrite transformers are used here to Live (Y) Line Line Live (Y) achieve desired isolation. The series combination of in- Trap Trap Netural Netural ductors and capacitors forms the high pass filter and the parallel combinations improve the bypass effect of the circuit. Though the high voltage coupler is connected Live (R) Line Line Live (R) Netural Trap Trap Netural between only two phases of the power line, line trap cir- cuit is needed for all three power lines differently as Live (B) Line Line Live (B) shown in Figure 2. Netural Trap Trap Netural 4. Design of Line Trap Circuit Line Line Coupler Coupler The line trap used here is actually multiple-T-filter con- figuration, which is made up of coils and capacitors. It is Transmitted or Transmitted or connected in series with the power line and presents high Received Signal Received Signal impedance to the carrier band of 1 MHz to 15 MHz. The Figure 2. Architecture of typical high voltage three phase T-filter configuration is chosen because of its advantage PLC system. of working well in low impedance line. However, for a Copyright © 2012 SciRes. JEMAA 164 Design of Bidirectional Coupling Circuit for Broadband Power-Line Communications multiple filter such as double-T-filter, it will have a Tek Stop M Pos: 400.0 μs CURSOR resonant rise lower in frequency than the trouble fre- Type quency [5]. A RC-shunt is used to overcome this prob- Vo l t a g e lem. A double-T-filter consists of two T-filter stages con- Source nected in series and symmetrical way [6]. Typical design CH1 of such a trap circuit is shown in Figure 5. Delta The transmission (ABCD) parameters of the trap can 10 V be written as, Cursor 1 42 2 –15.4 V 2 LC21 AD12 LC21 4 Cursor 2 –25.4 V 53 2 3 32 LC21 BL2221 LC 24 CH1 4.88VBW CH2 5.00 VBW M 25.0 μs CH1 –16.5 V CCLC232 121 <10 Hz From this it can be verified that an isolation of at least Figure 6. FSK modulated waveform at the input of the trans- 53 db between the power signal and the FSK signal is mitting side coupler. achievable at 13.2 Hz frequency. This is sufficient for the impedances seen in normal power distribution networks Tek Stop Pos: 412.50MHz MATH [7]. Operation FFT 5. Results and Discussion Source In the laboratory multipurpose power line was taken for CH1 experiment.