The use of PLC (power line communication) is growing as the adoption of IoT technology becomes more widespread. However, the maximum communication distance between PLC modems cannot yet be clearly defined since the communication characteristics of the power lines used for PLC are not formally specified. In this paper, the propagation characteristics in the high-speed PLC communication band of 2-30 MHz were investigated when equipment is not connected to the power line except both ends. The line constants for five typical types of cables used as single-phase and two-wire power lines were measured. Our results showed that different cables have markedly different transmission characteristics. The attenuation constant varied up to fourfold depending on the cable insulator material. We also derived a method of estimating the communication distance for different cables for application of the HD-PLC system, which is the most commonly used type of high-speed PLC. The measurement result by using VCT cable was almost agreed with the estimated value. By comparing the estimated distance with the experimental results, we show that the transmission distance can be estimated with sufficient accuracy for practical use.
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