Diseño e implementación de un prototipo para comunicación a través de la red eléctrica usando portadoras moduladas en amplitud

Abstract

In recent years, the power line has been used by devises that transmit signals that are applied in the home automation field. One of these technologies is X-10 that sends data signals when is detected the 60Hz waves zero crossing time (reaching transmission rates of 60bps), but the rest of the time is not send any data signal in the copper available bandwidth, that is, the capacity of the power line grid is being underused.

This work shows an alternative idea that consists in the generation of the set of tones using the ADAU1452MINIZ card that is controlled by the Sigma Studio software. The signal is amplified by the implementation a circuit configured in non-inverting mode, and finally is used a coupling circuit based on a capacitive filter, to let that the tones can be introduced into the residential power line grid.

At reception, the recovery of tones is done using a NI USB-6009 data acquisition card, with this objective a code in MatLab programing language has been programmed to shows the received signals in the frequency domain.

The prototype reaches the objective of inputting data signals without having to wait for zero crossings detection. Finally, several tests are done sending 8 tones, where their absence or presence represents two logical states (0L and 1L respectively), the recovery of this signals shown that the proposed idea is possible considering that are used only 8 tones to this work, but a larger number could be transmitted in later projects.