Experiments on timing aspects of DC-Powerline communications

The Power Line technology has received an increasing attention in the last decades due to its inherent benefits, mainly related to the reduction of cabling and associated costs. Power Line Communication (PLC) was first employed in power utilities, and since the 80s in home automation, too. However, its use in the automotive field received relatively little attention. This paper extends previous works towards assessing PLC technology for communications within the automotive domain. In particular, it focuses on the real-time behavior of such technology, namely the DCB500 adaptors supplied by the Yamar company, showing experimental results of transmission delays, communication overheads and effectiveness of the medium access control policies.