Reliable distributed power line communication networks for new public lighting management system

Power line communication (PLC) is the unique effective way to connect digital electronic ballast for HPS lamp into communication network without any new wiring in the new public lighting management system. The PLC network with a large scale of digital electronic ballasts in such industrial environment is always vulnerable and is liable to be destroyed in logical layer. To improve the reliability of the PLC network, the channel properties and the running characteristics of digital electronic ballast that affect the reliability of the PLC network are analyzed, and the possible ways in MAC layer to enhance the reliability of the PLC network are investigated. According to the investigation results, a novel low cost simplified self-organization algorithm in MAC layer suitable for practical engineering is proposed and the logical connectivity of the PLC network is automatically kept. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated analytically and experimentally.