Traditional quality evaluation of PLC equipment by connecting devices directly to a real-world powerline channel suffers from the lack of reproducibility due to the time-varying channel characteristics. A PLC emulator provides real-world behaviour of PLC channels. It can reproduce any typical channel condition at any time in a usual laboratory environment. Additional channel features can also be easily downloaded in milliseconds into the emulator. The emulator-based testing makes analysis and verifications easier and thus improves time-to-market for PLC equipment.

Research Objectives:

• PLC channel measurement
• FPGA-based channel emulation
• Definition of reference channels
• Performance, conformance and interoperability testing