Power Line Communication Throughput Analysis for Use in Last Mile Rural Broadband

Power Line Communication (PLC) or Broadband over Power Line (BPL) is an interesting approach in establishing last mile broadband access in rural areas. The most interesting aspect regarding PLC is the ability to use existing infrastructure for signal transmission, reducing deployment costs. Until recently the biggest problem for PLC was the low distance coverage and low data rate which was eliminated with the introduction of new standards. However, even thought new standards guarantee high data rates the practical implementation of these technologies for the use as a last mile solution is not present. In this paper we propose a basic set of measurements conducted on a laboratory test bed for the purpose of analyzing the possibility of PLC use in last mile broadband access. The measurements include the analysis of two contemporary PLC technologies in several scenarios versus TCP and UDP throughput. By analyzing given results it can be concluded that PLC has the ability to replace LAN network as a last mile solution, however it has some disadvantages primarily being the shared medium (power line). These results in UDP packet drop and increased TCP delay when large number of clients uses the network.