• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.9
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• pp.799-804
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• 2016

Broadband powerline communication (BPLC) uses distribution lines as a medium for achieving effective bidirectional data communication along with electric current flow. As the material characteristics of power lines are not good at the communication channel, the development of power line communication (PLC) systems for internet, voice, and data services requires measurement-based models of the transfer characteristics of the network suitable for performance analysis by simulation. In this paper, an analytic model describing a complex transfer function is presented to obtain the attenuation and path parameters for a multipath power line model. The calculated results demonstrated frequency-selective fading in multipath channels and signal attenuation with frequency, and were in good agreement with the experimental results. Inductive coupling units are used as couplers for coupling the signal to the power line to avoid physical connections to the distribution line. The inductance of the ferrite core, which depends on the frequency, determines the cut-off frequency of the inductive coupler. Coupling loss can be minimized by increasing the number of windings around the coupler. Coupling efficiency was improved by more than 6 dB with three windings compared to the results obtained with one winding.