Performance Evaluation of the PLC-MAC Protocol in Accordance with the OPERA Specification

Broadband powerline communications (BPLC) access network has gained a lot of interest during last years because it offers an alternative low cost but high performance solution for telecommunication networks in the access area. In order to accelerate the deployment of such kind of access networks, the OPERA proposal provides specifications for the technology and system descriptions of the BPLC networks. The MAC protocol, according to the standard, provides a collision free access scheme which employs a time division multiple access (TDMA) technique. In a BPLC network, a base station provides network access services directly to the end users or via repeaters. This paper investigates the MAC protocol specified in the OPERA project. The MAC protocol is analyzed and its performance is evaluated by means of analytical evaluations, in terms of the protocol efficiency. The analytical derivation is validated by simulations.