Evaluation of the backoff procedure of Homeplug MAC vs. DCF

Pittolo

IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun.

et al. 2016

Self Cite

197

114

In recent decades, power line communication has attracted considerable attention from the research community and industry, as well as from regulatory and standardization bodies. In this article we provide an overview of both narrowband and broadband systems, covering potential applications, regulatory and standardization efforts and recent research advancements in channel characterization, physical layer performance, medium access and higher layer specifications and evaluations. We also identify areas of current and further study that will enable the continued success of power line communication technology.essentially concerned with coexistence with other systems that also use the power grid (i.e. machines and appliances that draw electricity) and wireless systems operating in the same frequency bands as PLC. The frequency range used for today's PLC solutions starts as low as 125 Hz and reaches as high as 100 MHz. A useful classification of PLC systems according to frequency bands has been introduced in [28]: it distinguishes between ultra-narrowband (UNB), narrowband (NB) and broadband (BB) PLC systems, operating between about 125-3000 Hz, 3-500 kHz and 1.8-100 MHz, respectively. Most recent developments in standardization and regulation activities over the past 20 or so years apply to NB and BB PLC systems, and we will focus on these in the following.

Section: A Mac Protocols For Bb Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 98%

State of the Art in Power Line Communications: From the Applications to the Medium

Pittolo

IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun.

et al. 2016

Self Cite

197

114

“…The use of the deferral counter aims to infer whether high contention is present on the channel and attempts to reduce the channel attempt probability. This ability to increase performance is studied in [11] for different scenarios. On our second point, service differentiation, is achieved by defining 4 CAs with different channel access parameters and a strict priority resolution scheme.…”

Section: The Plc Standardmentioning

confidence: 99%

When priority resolution goes way too far: An experimental evaluation in PLC networks

2015 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)

2015

Self Cite

Power Line Communication (PLC) devices are increasingly used and available. However, research carried out at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer is limited. This article addresses Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms defined in the widely implemented Homeplug and IEEE 1901 standards. By means of a testbed constructed from off-the-shelf components we identify a number of issues with a potentially significant impact on user satisfaction: i) a pronounced starvation and variability of lower-priority traffic when different access categories are combined and ii) an oscillatory behaviour in higher-priority and high-traffic configurations. We also determine the underlying causes of such findings and propose possible solutions. Our contributions are of relevance to both the research community and manufacturers, as we identify crucial aspects to be revisited in order to guarantee successful advancement and further adoption of the technology.

“…Despite being a substantial change over DCF, this feature has not been deeply evaluated. Attempts to compare DCF and PLC MAC protocols have been made in [5,6,7] and [8]. However, there is still much work to do in order to fully demonstrate the conditions under which the deferral counter improves the performance of the network.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On efficiency and validity of previous Homeplug MAC performance analysis

2015

Computer Networks

The Medium Access Control protocol of Power Line Communication networks (defined in Homeplug and IEEE 1901 standards) has received relatively modest attention from the research community. As a consequence, there is only one analytic model that complies with the standardised MAC procedures and considers unsaturated conditions. We identify two important limitations of the existing analytic model: high computational expense and predicted results just prior to the predicted saturation point do not correspond to long-term network performance. In this work, we present a simplification of the previously defined analytic model of Homeplug MAC able to substantially reduce its complexity and demonstrate that the previous performance results just before predicted saturation correspond to a transitory phase. We determine that the causes of previous misprediction are common analytical assumptions and the potential occurrence of a transitory phase, that we show to be of extremely long duration under certain circumstances. We also provide techniques, both analytical and experimental, to correctly predict long-term behaviour and analyse the effect of specific Homeplug/IEEE 1901 features on the magnitude of misprediction errors.