The aim of this project is to provide an open source software implementation of IEEE 1901 physical layer. The software can then be used in software-defined radio systems.
IEEE 1901 is a standard for high speed communication protocol via electric powerlines. The baseline of IEEE 1901 are the HomePlug AV and HD-PLC standards.
We chose IEEE 1901 as it includes the HomePlug standard, which is the most widely used standard for in-home PLC. IEEE 1901 also indirectly includes the HomePlug Green PHY standard, which is a more power-efficient version of HomePlug.
No. That is why we refer to gr-plc protocol as “IEEE 1901-like”.
Gr-plc includes only the HomePlug part (i.e. FFT-PHY) of IEEE 1901. In addition, the turbo code used in gr-plc is different than the one in IEEE 1901/HomePlug. The reason is that the library used for decoding (IT++) does not support a two-input turbo code as in IEEE 1901. If desired, the original IEEE 1901 encoder and decoder can be integrated instead, while keeping the rest of implementation intact. For other differences between gr-plc and IEEE 1901 see more details.
A more detailed explanation of the parameters and the algorithms used are given in the thesis “In-vehicle powerline communication using software-defined radio”.
You may contact me at roeeb@ubc.ece.ca.