Broad band Transmission Performance over Residential Power Lines Employing VDSL2

Bridging and Transmission of VDSL2 broadband over power lines has received considerable attention recently to cater to broadband distribution within the premises of a residence. Power lines are fundamentally different from telephone lines both in topology and load impedance. Power lines have a thicker gauge and shorter straight lengths, apart from a large number of bridge taps (BT) with inductive load terminations, which are not matched to line impedances. In this paper ABCD parameters of the individual sections are used to analyze the power line channel of upto 10 bridge taps over a 600 meter length. The noise profiles considered include periodic impulse noise which is predominant over power line sections, apart from AWGN. Tone loading profiles have been obtained using Discrete Multitone Transmission (DMT) as in VDSL2 over a bandwidth of 30 MHz. This analysis points to the fact that lower Transmit PSD would suffice to match the rates achievable by traditional VDSL2 when bridge taps are open. However with inductive loads typical in residences, we recommend a two step approach of (a) equipping existing VDSL2 modem front end hybrids with settable impedances that would approach a conjugate match of the loaded line along with (b) capability to nominally increase the Transmit PSD and added subbands to achieve the desired rates in a seamless manner as in VDSL2.