Ripple-based power-line communication in switching DC-DC converters exploiting switching frequency modulation

Power-Line Communication (PLC) systems represent a very interesting opportunity for introducing low-cost communication capabilities over already existing power-line wires. In this paper we introduce a PLC technique that can be applied to systems with a DC power bus that employ a switching power converter as main power supply unit. The proposed technique is extremely simple to be implemented, and requires only minor modifications on the main switching converter. As a proof of this, we are capable to implement the proposed PLC in a system composed by commercial DC-DC converter boards without any circuital modification to the boards themselves. Measurements on this test system show the capability to communicate up to about 80 kbit/s with a bit error rate so low as 10^-5.