SOPHIA-ANTIPOLIS, France -- One of the major attractions to the ETSI Powerline Plugtests™ event, taking place over the last two weeks has been the availability of a sophisticated and dedicated test bed provided by the ETSI Plugtests service at ETSI and, a week later, field tests on a Medium and Low Voltage Network at EDF, close to Paris, from the 22nd to the 26th November.

Power-Line Telecommunications (PLT) means the transmission of information over the existing power lines with a high bandwidth. Recent PLT systems use the frequency range between about 1.6 MHz and 30 MHz. The tests carried out at the ETSI Powerline Plugtests were designed for this frequency range.

As different Powerline technologies exist, this week’s event has tested the performance of different products and has identified any technical issues to be addressed. Testing has focused mainly on co-existence of Indoor and Access PLC equipment and performance of equipment against test cases in an artificial environment and in real installations.

At the ETSI hosted event, equipment and support has come in various ways from the participants themselves. An example of this is the support given by Spirent Communications, by supplying their SmartBits Systems to allow standard measurements of data traffic during the tests. Other support from participants included;

- The assistance of the IST 6POWER Project (http://www.6power.org), from which Consulintel and DS2 were responsible for carrying-out the measurements.

- Eichhoff GmbH supplied filters, used inside the test bed.

Holger Hirsch, of the University of Duisburg-Essen, who was responsible for the Test Cases used at the event commented;

“The tests at ETSI represented a selection of different tests which has delivered significant information about the performance of recent PLT technology. We assumed that the modem and PLT system manufacturers have taken care about correct implementation of protocols, therefore the tests here have concentrated on the lower levels of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) Model”.

The tests have been carried out over two weeks. The first week at the ETSI premises, was in an artificial test environment. The second week has focused on real installations and has taken place in Antony, close to Paris, on an experimental EDF network, including tests on the Medium and Low Voltage part.

Victor Dominguez Richards, Chairman of ETSI PLT and Director of Strategy and Standardisation at DS2, said;

“I am happy to see the success of this second PLT Plugtest event and delighted with the achievement of having performed controlled laboratory tests and in-the-field real life test cases, representing the in-house and access scenarios. We find the Plugtest events to be a unique opportunity to test together, analyse and exchange ideas among the powerline experts. Having sponsored and actively participated in all the phases of the both PLT Plugtests, DS2 shows its strong commitment to standardisation.”

European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI)