Challenges for 1 Gbps power line communications in home networks

We address the challenges related to the development of very high speed power line communication (PLC) systems in the home environment. The development of such a technology is fundamental to realize the objective of reliably delivering new high speed services in the home environment in a network that integrates in a coordinated fashion also wireless systems. That is, an in-house network with the need of ldquonog new wiresrdquo. We start with an overview of the state of the art PLC technology, and then we describe our vision on application scenarios, and requirements. We address the problem related to transmission bandwidth, channel modeling, capacity evaluation as well as we describe novel advanced transmission technologies that enable reliable high speed transmission. We show that by enhancing current technology bandwidth up to 100 MHz, Gbps transmission is achievable.