A Novel Approach to the Modeling of the Indoor Power Line Channel Part I: Circuit Analysis and Companion Model

Abstract

Multiconductor Transmission Line (MTL) theory is utilized here for modeling the transfer function of power cables in the indoor environment. This approach allows us to determine a circuit model that well characterizes the underlying physics of signal propagation over power-line (PL) cables and that also allows us to account for particular wiring practices common in residential and business environments. In Part II of this work, we will show how the proposed approach allows one to compute a priori and in a deterministic fashion the transfer function of any PL link by using two-port transmission matrices, as commonly done for telephone channel modeling. In this two-part work we will cross several layers of abstraction following a bottom-up approach: starting from the definition of circuit models in this paper, we will arrive at a method for the computation of the transfer function of an indoor PL link in Part II of this work. Moreover, as discussed in Part II, the approach followed here allows us to unveil some special properties of the PL channel that were never reported earlier, such as the symmetry of the transfer function.