Boosting powerline communications for ubiquitous connectivity in enterprises

Powerline communication (PLC) provides inexpensive, secure and high speed network connectivity, by leveraging the existing power distribution networks inside the buildings. While PLC technology has the potential to improve connectivity and is considered a key enabler for sensing, control, and automation applications in enterprises, it has been mainly deployed for improving connectivity in homes. Deploying PLCs in enterprises is more challenging since the power distribution network is more complex as compared to homes. Moreover, existing PLC technologies such as HomePlug AV have not been designed for and evaluated in enterprise deployments. To this end, we give guidlines for designing PLC networks for providing ubiquitous connectivity in enterprises, based on measurement study of PLC performance in enterprise settings using commodity HomePlug AV PLC devices. Based on our findings, we propose that careful planning of PLC network topology, routing and spectrum sharing can significantly boost performance of enterprise PLC networks.