The HomePlug Powerline Alliance and HomePlug AV Overviews

As evidenced at the 2006 Consumer Eletronic Show, numerous products and services require connectivity to enable the distribution of video, audio throughout the home. Last August, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance approved HomePlug AV, a 200 Mbps class in-home powerline networking specification based on the best of multiple technology contributors. This keynote presentation will discuss the rationale, design, and performance of the physical (PHY) layer, the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and the Convergence layer of HomePlug AV and will show how this standard satisfies the demand for the high data rates and quality of service requirements for distribution of multimedia throughout the home. This presentation will explain the use of longer OFDM symbols, full variable bit loading, higher order constellations, and turbo error correction coding and other techniques that enable HomePlug AV to produce the physical data rates needed. It is shown that OFDM symbol shaping along with programmable frequency occupancy enables HomePlug AV to effectively deal with regulatory changes. The physical layer operates in concert with a highly efficient MAC to take advantage of AC line cycle based channel adaptation to deal effectively with synchronous noise. The HomePlug AV MAC is optimized to support multimedia applications that demand high application level throughput along with stringent quality of service assurances. Latency requirements of 10 to 300 milliseconds are typical, along with very low tolerance for packet loss.