May 14, 2009

IEEE Completes BPL Draft

At its March meeting, the IEEE P1901 working group completed a preliminary version of the draft standard it is developing, IEEE P1901, "Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks: Medium Access Control and Physical Layer Specifications."

The Working Group's technical sub-groups presented unified texts for the first four chapters of the draft standard, which were unanimously approved. In addition, a refined table of contents for the draft standard was presented, detailing how to merge several confirmed proposals. The table of contents was also unanimously approved.

When completed, the project will present a standard for high speed (>100 Mbps at the physical layer) communication devices via AC electric power lines, so called broadband over power line (BPL) devices. The standard will use transmission frequencies below 100 MHz. This standard is intended to be usable by all classes of BPL devices, including BPL devices used for the first-mile/last-mile connection (<1,500 meters to the premises) to broadband services as well as BPL devices used in buildings for LANs and other data distribution (<100 meters between devices).

The draft standard will continue to be developed over the next several months. The working group will next meet 18-22 May in Las Vegas.