IEEE and ITU-R work on BPL issues

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is likely to complete its work on a draft standard for Broadband over Powerlines (BPL) and put it to a vote by the end of the year.

Chair of the IEEE P1901 working group, Jean-Philippe Faure said the draft standard will use transmission frequencies below 100MHz and be developed over the next several months.

Also the International Telecommunications Union is continues its work on BPL through the ITU-R Working Party 1A which is preparing a report and examining the interference protection levels required by various radio services.

The International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) has updated the section of the report which deals with the Amateur Service.

The next meeting of ITU-R WP 1A is in Seoul, Korea, 24 February to 4 March. The IARU is to be represented by one of its technical consultants, Peter Chadwick, G3RZP a past president of the RSGB.

Meantime the IEEE has through its working group achieved a baseline of the ‘Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks: Medium Access Control and Physical Layer Specifications’ http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1901

Faure describes this development, contained in 2000 pages of documentation, as “a major milestone in the development of a BPL standard”.

He said the next steps are to “harmonise and improve the different sections and then finalise the draft standard for IEEE Sponsor Ballot by the end of year."

The IEEE which encompasses the electrical and electronics engineering and computer science fields has developed nearly 900 activity industry standards.

The P1901 working group created in June 2005 and has a membership of 20 representing information technology communications, consumer electronics, telcos, utilities, semiconductor manufacturers and academia.

It is charged with developing a standard applicable to BPL as the first or last mile connection option, and in-house BPL devices used in buildings for local area networks or other data transmission.

A draft standard will reflect work over the past two years addressing some 400 functional and technical requirements for BPL.

These include coexistence and interoperability between different BPL devices, and user security and privacy issues.

The standard will also comply with Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) limits set by national regulators to ensure successful coexistence by BPL with wireless and telecommunications.