Hams Say Martin Misrepresenting BPL > FCC Official Anouncement

FCC Official Anouncement

Commissioner Martin

while BPL can cause interference, if properly set up, it will not. Have any of you read any of the information about low-voltage BPL?

I might also at that the ARRL has BPL set up at their HQ in Connecticut, and has not experienced any problems.

Still, I'm not praising or damning this technology just yet...there needs to be many more tests run with the low-voltage BPL.

All the more reason for the FCC chairman not to be such a cheerleader. All the more reason for him not to highlight products and programs that have failed.

reply to Fox McCloud
Yes, but the ARRL has a Motorola system, and Motherola understands radio *far* better than these fly-by-night outfits. They (Motorola) also worked closely with the ARRL when the system was being designed, and specifically avoided frequencies that were problematic.
--
One man's Magic is another man's Engineering.

reply to Fox McCloud

""don't expect it to blow the doors off of FIOS or even cable and DSL anytime soon.""

Which I totally agree with, and think most people either don't know, or are misled to, about. They think "Internet over powerlines", and figure it's a great way to have access anywhere you have power, especially out in the sticks. The problem is, is that it doesn't travel all that far, and to *really* get it everywhere the power goes, you'd need to build _another_ infrastructure on top of the existing power system.
It's just a loser of a system for high-speed data transmission, and yet the FCC keeps pumping away at it. Another good example of the FCC going down the tubes when they put *politicians* in charge instead of Engineers.
--
One man's Magic is another man's Engineering.

reply to AnonProxy

Re: FCC Official Anouncement

reply to Anon

Re: DS2 200 Mbps BPL tech is working with ARRL Laboratory !!!

"I wonder why there isn't one of those systems operating there for testing."

You knew the answer, Mr. hamster !!!!

No body except DS2.es ...IMHO

Actually I don't know the answer, otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question. The ARRL HQ site would be good for ingress interference testing as well. They run about six high power transmitters five days a week.

re: "DS2 provides a special mitigation technique called "Notching" which ensures that no interfering radio signals are produced at the critical frequencies used by short-wave radio. Notching has been a key requirement of recent rulings from both the FCC and the European Union. The flexibility of the DS2 product, with its programmable spectrum mask and downstream notching capability has been tested by the British Telecommunications regulator (www.ofcom.com) and has been praised in a published Ofcom report as a " a significant step towards a more EMC friendly PLT solution."
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Unleash the opportunities of a SYMMETRICAL 200Mbps “Smart Grid”, IPTV and in-home networking for business optimisation of your commercial opportunities of BPL/PLC with killer applications & services: in-home MDU networking, IPTV and triple-play... !!!

reply to rf_engineer
The Motorola system at ARRL HQ was also tested for ingress. The system had been installed at W1AW, the bulletin station at ARRL HQ in Newington, CT. The station operates simultaneously on 7 bands in the frequency range BPL uses, at a power level of 1500 watts on each band. The BPL system was installed in a test configuration with the wireless link shooting across the parking lot from the ARRL HQ administrative building to the W1AW building located about 300 feet distant. The bulletin-station antennas are clustered around the building, with the closest being the 3.5 MHz dipole that is about 20 feet over the building.

A 240-volt wire was run to one of the W1AW towers, to simulate a typical drop wire from an overhead pole to a premise. The Motorola BPL system was operated on the 120-volt wiring inside W1AW. Most of the building uses conduit, so separate plastic-sheathed "Romex" style wiring was run from the demark point to locations on the first and second floors of the building.

I was testing the sytsem with the Motorola engineer at the time the bulletins came on. The system data rate was not significantly slowed down from on/off-keyed CW, single-sideband or data transmissions. My conclusion was that the hardware filters provided significant rejection of nearby radiated signals.

Ed Hare
ARRL Laboratory Manager
225 Main St
Newington, CT 06111
Tel: 860-594-0318
Email: W1RFI@arrl.org

reply to rf_engineer
>> You knew the answer, Mr. hamster !!!!

> Actually I don't know the answer, otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question.

It would be interesting to see if BPL200mbs is willing to share what answer he thinks you knew. (I am not sure why he is choosing a screen name that says that BPL operates at 200 millibits per second, though.)

From the onset, ARRL has left the doors to cooperation wide open. Motorola led the way in taking advantage of the opportunity, but at this later date, some of the other BPL manufacturers, utilities and ISPs are also ready to do what needs to be done to what needs to be done to improve the electromagnetic-compatibility (EMC) performance of BPL.

Those doors were open before access BPL came down the pike. ARRL's work with HomePlug helped them to design a product that has deployed without major interference problems. Their product specification includes notches in all of the ham bands. To date, there are 6,000,000 HomePlug devices deployed, and ARRL doesn't have a single reported case of interference involving HomePlug and Amateur Radio. Frankly, why the rest of the access BPL industry actively avoids any formal specifications for their product to do the same thing is puzzling at best. I have tried to persuade the IEEE P1775 BPL EMC committee to do so, to no avail.

To date, the most successful BPL company has been Current Communications, with BPL deployed past 60,000 homes in Cincinnati and in progress past 2,000,000 homes in Dallas. Their product uses HomePlug specifications, and not surprisingly, they have not had major interference problems. They also maintain regular dialogue with ARRL. It is ironic to me that with all the fuss that some in this industry have gone through to avoid having to address interference responsibly, the most successful BPL company is building on work that ARRL helped do. See:

»p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/rfi/HomePlug···ARRL.pdf

Other companies are also cooperating. I have regular conversations about EMC issues with Amperion, Current, IBEC, Mitsubishi, and Corinex. These companies are serious about EMC and sincerely want to see their products deploy successfully without interference problems. They are the ones that have positioned themselves to best be able to do that.

I also maintain ongoing dialogue with the electric utility industry. It is always interesting to note that after the IEEE meetings, I am most often dining with guys from the power industry, asking and answering questions. (Most of these utilities are hungry for information, and they know that I will tell them things that the BPL sales folks probably won't.)

Other companies are not as cooperative. In once case, I ran into engineers from one of the companies at one of the BPL sites. Their responses to interference complaints there claimed they wanted to cooperate, but when I invited the engineer to take a quick ride in my mobile station to see firsthand what interference I was seeing, he told me that he couldn't do that. That company's idea of cooperation didn't include taking a 10-minute ride in my car.

BPL200mbs is correct in one of the claims he is making about his investment, though -- DS2 has made incremental improvements in their notching. At about -40 dB, both the work done in the ARRL Lab with their engineers and my own experiences in the field show a significant improvement in the interference potential *to Amateur Radio." At the Corinex installation in Houston, I found that most of the system was operating legally and that except in the two areas where I saw the system operating over the FCC limits, the notching was adequate to be a reasonable general EMC solution. A fixed station there had filed an interference complaint, and CenterPoint did what was needed to correct the interference. When I visited that station, I confirmed that the interference was fixed.

What this shows is that if BPL avoids locally used spectrum, it will not interfere with frequencies it doesn't use. That, however, needs to be much better than the early deployments of BPL, that had 25 dB of notching on a good day. Some in the industry have quietly confessed to me that their early systems had problems. I appreciate the improvements, but I also note that they are not going to take back the things they said and did to try to avoid resolving those early problems. The credibility of this industry is still strained by their early claims that BPL would be inaudible to licensed radio users or that BPL on overhead power lines is a point source and other technical nonsense.

But even my experience in Houston shows me that if BPL is to avoid interference, it can do so on only the spectrum it protects with notches. In Houston, that includes the Amateur bands. It does not include shortwave bands or CB. The fact that, even with the care CenterPoint has taken to do things right, I found two nodes operating above the FCC limits tells us that considerable care must be taken to do things right. IMHO, only those companies that are willing to listen to and respond to those with interference complaints and those willing to carefully check each node installed have a shot at making it work. And right now, those conditions don't exist with every BPL manufacturer, integrator or electric utility.

One thing I do know, however -- gratuitous insults are not going to solve anything. Many of BPL200mbs's posts have been deleted for the insulting terms he is fond of using. Even "Mr. Hamster" was intented to evoke anger, not understanding.

»www.arrl.org/bpl

Ed Hare
ARRL Laboratory Manager
225 Main St
Newington, CT 06111
Tel: 860-594-0318
Email: w1rfi@arrl.org

it should be up to 600Mbps BPL ... !!!

up to 600 Mbps !!!

Corinex Communications showcases the 600Mbps
Multi Dwelling Unit Gateway at HITEC 2006

World’s First MDU Networking device that offers up to three simultaneous
200Mbps Powerline and Coax backbones within a building

(»broadbandoverpowerlines.blogspot···ces.html)

re: "In addition to utilizing Ambient’s industry-leading, FCC-certified X2 BPL Access Node (with up to three 200Mbit BPL interfaces), Ambient-designed next-generation overhead and underground couplers and BPL modems in the deployment, Ambient will provide the engineering and technical support needed to design, support and assist in the deployment and management of the network. The deployment will also include X2 nodes with integrated 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi support to provide wireless access. "

(»http://broadbandoverpowerlines.b···has.html)

Will this answer your BANDWIDTH slowdown fear ?
--
Unleash the opportunities of a SYMMETRICAL 200Mbps “Smart Grid”, IPTV and in-home networking for business optimisation of your commercial opportunities of BPL/PLC with killer applications & services: in-home MDU networking, IPTV and triple-play... !!!

Nice Ambient commercial.

reply to BPL 200 Mbps

Re: FCC Official Anouncement !!!

reply to W1RFI

Re: DS2 200 Mbps BPL tech is working with ARRL Laboratory !!!