Predicted performances of power line communication in aircraft

The possibility of using power line communication to transmit information in a large aircraft is studied. The communication link, which has been identified and chosen in the frame of the TAUPE European project, is the cabin lighting system since its tree shape and large structure allows covering most of the other possible applications. A statistical theoretical analysis, based on the multiconductor transmission line theory, has been carried out to determine the properties of the channel transfer function. This has been done in two steps: First a simplified network was considered to outline the parameters of the network geometry playing an important role on the path loss, and then by modelling a test bench which will be used as a demonstrator. The PLC link has been modelled for predicting data rate and bit error rate, taking the EMC constraints into account.