CE Industry Expects Final BPL Specs by April, Says Stelts
The Consumer Electronics Powerline Communications Alliance (CEPCA) expects to approve a final PLC system specification for coexistence between different BPL technologies by mid-April, CEPCA Pres. Michael Stelts told us. CEPCA is doing a 3rd revision of its draft specification with the United Powerline Assn. (UPA), whose members use Design of System on Silicon (DS2) technology. That technology got a boost from its recent adoption by the Open PLC European Research Alliance (OPERA) as the baseline technology for its global BPL access and in-home specification (CD Feb 22 p3).
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By collaborating with UPA, Stelts said, “we have more eyes looking” at the CEPCA specification, and it “becomes so much stronger.” The arrangement also sets up UPA members to be more comfortable with the specification, he added. DS2 was adopted by consensus in Europe, he said, and “that is a wonderful thing.” The OPERA standard “highlights the need for CEPCA,” he said. With HomePlug competing against the DS2 standard, he said, “in some situations those two are going to collide with each other.”
CEPCA, part of the IEEE standard setting body, isn’t pushing a particular technology, Stelts said. Rather, it seeks a coexistence specification that will work between any existing technologies including HomePlug and DS2, so if OPERA and HomePlug technology providers add the CEPCA specification to their chips, “they will not collide catastrophically in the field,” he said. Access and in-home BPL use the same power lines, he said, so there’s a differences not only between 2 technologies but also between 2 industries -- the CE industry and power utilities. The industries don’t talk to each other much, he said, “so the technology providers need to step up to the plate and help prevent something before it happens.”
Philips recently joined CEPCA, which “is good news for us,” he said. Other members include Sony, Hitachi, Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi and Pioneer. Meanwhile, IEEE BPL standards group P1901 is set for its first vote on a specification at a March 26-29 meeting in Orlando. The “timetable is to get something out by the end of the year,” United Power Line Council Regulatory Dir. Brett Kilbourne, who heads the IEEE BPL Study Group, told us. The OPERA news will have a big impact on the IEEE work, he said, with the UPA using it as a basis for the specification it wants to see emerge from the IEEE. The IEEE group first will work on a coexistence specification, so signals don’t cancel each other. Later it will turn to interoperability so pieces of systems can work together.