Measurements and analysis of PLC channels in a cruise ship

Abstract

Power line channel measurements and analysis in a cruise ship is the topic of this paper. Applications and benefits that the deployment of power line communication in a ship environment can bring, justify research initiatives targeting the study of channel characteristics. We have carried out a channel measurement campaign over the low voltage power distribution network of housing and public areas in the band 0-50 MHz. The data have been used to study the statistics of the channel, and in particular, of the average channel gain, RMS delay spread, coherence bandwidth. The analysis of theoretical capacity in the band 2-28 MHz (used by state-of-the art PLC technology) shows that it is in excess of 200 Mbps and up 600 Mbps depending on the background noise level and power line network segment of the ship. The capacity increases by up to 85% in the band 2-50 MHz. Furthermore, the three-phase electrical distribution allows the exploitation of multiple-input multiple-output transmission which can double the capacity as the results in this paper show.