Electric Power Systems Research 150 (2017) 188–197 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Electric Power Systems Research j o ur nal ho me page: www.elsevier.com/lo cate/epsr Characterization of Brazilian in-home power line channels for data communication Thiago R. Oliveira a,∗ , Antonio A.M. Picorone b , Sergio L. Netto c , Moises V. Ribeiro d a Electronics Department, Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Southeast of Minas Gerais (IFSEMG), Campus Juiz de Fora, Brazil b Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil c Electrical Engineering Program at COPPE-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil d Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), and Smarti9 Ltda, Brazil a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 1 February 2017 Received in revised form 23 April 2017 Accepted 9 May 2017 Keywords: Channel characterization Power line communication Coherence time Data rate Access impedance a b s t r a c t This paper focuses on the characterization of Brazilian in-home power line channels for data commu- nication when a sounding-based approach is applied. Based on a measurement campaign carried out in seven Brazilian residences, a statistical characterization of frequency response magnitude, average channel gain, coherence bandwidth, root mean squared delay spread, coherence time, achievable data rate, additive noise and access impedance are presented, considering the frequency bands from 1.7 up to 30, 50 and 100 MHz. Comparative analysis considering previous contributions show disparities and similarities among typical in-home power line channels measured in different countries. The attained results reveal that average channel gain in Brazil is higher than in other countries, the linear relationship between average channel gain and root mean squared delay spread and the inverse relation between coherence bandwidth and root mean squared delay spread are confirmed. Moreover, these results show that coherence bandwidth in Brazil is wider than in European countries, root mean squared delay spread in Brazil is shorten than in US and European countries and coherence time in Brazil is shorter than what is previously reported in the literature. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction There is a growing interest in the use of electric power grids for data communications purposes. In fact, power line communi- cation (PLC) systems and their applications have been investigated by academic and business sectors. As electric power grids were not originally designed for data communication purposes, they con- stitute a challenging medium, in which the transmitted signals suffer severe attenuation and are strongly corrupted by colored and impulsive noise. Also, the diversity of topologies of electric power grids and the dynamic of the connected devices (loads) make these grids hard to characterize and model. In this sense, an expressive effort for the characterization of PLC channels is needed in order to allow a better exploitation of such challenging and opportunistic data communication medium. Indeed, there are some contributions in the literature about this ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: thiago.oliveira@ifsudestemg.edu.br (T.R. Oliveira), picorone@ieee.org (A.A.M. Picorone), sergioln@smt.ufrj.br (S.L. Netto), mribeiro@ieee.org (M.V. Ribeiro). issue and they can be classified according to the voltage level and frequency bandwidth. For instance, the outdoor PLC channel can be evaluated for low-voltage [1], medium-voltage [2,3] and high-voltage [4]. Also, underground medium-voltage PLC channels are evaluated in [5] while [6] deals with overhead conductors. For the indoor-PLC channel case, there is the following subdivi- sion: residential or commercial buildings (usually referenced as in-home) [7,6], and in-vehicles (cars [8], ships [9] and aircrafts [10]). Finally, the PLC channel characterization can be performed by considering distinct bandwidths, usually classified as narrowband and broadband. The narrowband PLC comprises the frequencies up to a few hundreds kHz and are used for low data rate appli- cations [11,12]. On the other hand, for broadband PLC systems the investigated bandwidths are those limited to the frequency of 30 MHz [13], which is regulated in some European countries, and to the frequency of 100 MHz [7], in which data rate in the order of 1–2 Gbps can be achieved. In Brazil, the telecommunication regu- latory authority allows that broadband PLC systems operate in the frequency band from 1.7 up to 50 MHz which is a frequency band that lacks characterization. There are also few works that provide analysis covering the frequency band of up to 300 MHz [14,15]. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2017.05.011 0378-7796/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.