BPL System Installed at ARRL Headquarters

[Pete, WA2CWA]

This system seems to take away some of the earlier problems with BPL. See the complete story:

http://www.remote.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/08/29/1/?nc=1

What it is - the Motorola story:

http://www.motorola.com/Enterprise/us/en_us/solution.aspx?navigationpath=id_802i/id_386i&tabbed=Details&detailpage=PowerlineLV[/color]

[KE1GF]

Pete, I saw a banner on the Verison Satellite CO 1/3 of a mile down the street here in town. I think from what I read, they're going to be offering some kind of fiber to the door. Next time I go by I'll have to rubber-neck and read more closely. Verison already offers a ADSL 3Mb/768kb here, I have comcast which is 3Mb/384kb. Comcast could offer a full 10Mb/10Mb, which you'll never see with DSL. There is potential for scaling but not like fibre. Depending on what's gonna happen with gramps, I may be telling comcast to take their $160/mo cable bill and shove it. It all depends on how much basic is with one box and internet; I'm not even getting HD-CATV and it's absolutely insane. I guess it's called Fios and it's 15Mb/s downlink for $50/mo which is what I'm paying for cable internet now, I'll have to read more.

[k4kyv]

From what I understand from all this, the Motorola system uses fibre optic cable as far as the utility pole in front of the house, and then uses the 110/220v drop to bring the broadband signal into the house.  Isn't this basically the same thing as the HomePlug systems that are presently in operation that use the internal a.c. power wiring in the house? 

I recall HomePlug commented in opposition to the proposed 60m band (when it was being proposed to create a real ham band there) on the basis that its existing systems lacked notches for that frequency. They were more concerned about interference from the transmitter than to the radio receiver.

Although this seems like a big improvement over the BPL "last mile" approach that carries the digital hash over the unshielded mv power lines, wouldn't it be simpler and technically more sound practice, if the fibre optic cable is already bringing the signal as far as the utility pole in front of the house, to simply intstall a fibre optic drop to the building, rather than to transfer to another transmission medium for the "last 100 feet"?

The closely twisted 110/220v drop cable would radiate much less, much the same way that DSL seems to not be causing widespread rfi problems.  I wonder about older installations that use three distinctly separated copper wires for the a.c. power drop, instead of the twisted aluminium bundle that is standard to-day.

I wonder if this might be to offer a face-saving measure to the utility industry, that maybe they have finally figured out that "access BPL" won't work, but with this system in place they can tell the public that the interference problem has been addressed, without having to admit that they had been led down the path by lobbyists for a junk technology.

Nevertheless, it still seems to me that an additional 50-100 ft run of fibre optic cable would be less expensive than a weattherproof fibre-to-metallic converter installed on the utility pole, plus an ethernet/a.c. power adaptor at the a.c. outlet in the house.

[wk3c]

From what I understand from all this, the Motorola system uses fibre optic cable as far as the utility pole in front of the house, and then uses the 110/220v drop to bring the broadband signal into the house.  Isn't this basically the same thing as the HomePlug systems that are presently in operation that use the internal a.c. power wiring in the house?

Read the article on the ARRL web page.  The Mot system uses their "Canopy" wireless broadband system (at microwave frequencies) to get to the pole, then an "enhanced HomePlug" system with deeper notches to come down the 220 drop to the house.  The article indicates that Ed's preliminary testing indicates it's pretty good, but Ed will be thorough (we're good friends and have worked together on BPL issues for some time).

If the "enhanced HomePlug" on the drops still causes problems in particular instances, I understand/believe that they can bridge to 802.11 and simply give the user a wireless router to get into the house.

I recall HomePlug commented in opposition to the proposed 60m band (when it was being proposed to create a real ham band there) on the basis that its existing systems lacked notches for that frequency. They were more concerned about interference from the transmitter than to the radio receiver.

Although this seems like a big improvement over the BPL "last mile" approach that carries the digital hash over the unshielded mv power lines, wouldn't it be simpler and technically more sound practice, if the fibre optic cable is already bringing the signal as far as the utility pole in front of the house, to simply intstall a fibre optic drop to the building, rather than to transfer to another transmission medium for the "last 100 feet"?

As I stated above (and is reported in the article on the ARRL website) the Mot system doesn't take fiber to the pole, but uses a wireless broadband system at microwave frequencies to get to the pole.


The closely twisted 110/220v drop cable would radiate much less, much the same way that DSL seems to not be causing widespread rfi problems.  I wonder about older installations that use three distinctly separated copper wires for the a.c. power drop, instead of the twisted aluminium bundle that is standard to-day.

With the deeper notches in the ham bands, it seems, by Ed's reports of the preliminary tests at W1AW that this system is much better than all of the others

[snip]
73,
Carl - wk3c
http://home.ptd.net/~wk3c

[k4kyv]

Read the article on the ARRL web page.  The Mot system uses their "Canopy" wireless broadband system (at microwave frequencies) to get to the pole, then an "enhanced HomePlug" system with deeper notches to come down the 220 drop to the house.  The article indicates that Ed's preliminary testing indicates it's pretty good, but Ed will be thorough (we're good friends and have worked together on BPL issues for some time).

If the "enhanced HomePlug" on the drops still causes problems in particular instances, I understand/believe that they can bridge to 802.11 and simply give the user a wireless router to get into the house.

No doubt it's a big improvement over the access BPL over MV power lines.  But if the signal gets to the utility pole by wireless, wouldn't it be better still to put the wireless  receiver right on the house, instead of on a utility pole and piping the signal into the house via the power line?  The power line drop link seems even more unnecessary using the wireless microwave system, than it would be with fibre optic cable delivery to the pole as I had previously thought.

I'm not saying that development of this system should be discouraged vs the noise-generating access BPL.  I just don't see the point in the utility pole-to-house link, when the microwave receiver/antenna combination could be mounted directly on the  roof of the house and a short cable dropped down inside, or better still, a wireless router could be built right into the unit, and broadband access would be available anywhere in the house with no connection to the powerline at all, except to power the unit.

[wk3c]

Read the article on the ARRL web page.  The Mot system uses their "Canopy" wireless broadband system (at microwave frequencies) to get to the pole, then an "enhanced HomePlug" system with deeper notches to come down the 220 drop to the house.  The article indicates that Ed's preliminary testing indicates it's pretty good, but Ed will be thorough (we're good friends and have worked together on BPL issues for some time).

If the "enhanced HomePlug" on the drops still causes problems in particular instances, I understand/believe that they can bridge to 802.11 and simply give the user a wireless router to get into the house.

No doubt it's a big improvement over the access BPL over MV power lines.  But if the signal gets to the utility pole by wireless, wouldn't it be better still to put the wireless  receiver right on the house, instead of on a utility pole and piping the signal into the house via the power line?  The power line drop link seems even more unnecessary using the wireless microwave system, than it would be with fibre optic cable delivery to the pole as I had previously thought.

I'm not saying that development of this system should be discouraged vs the noise-generating access BPL.  I just don't see the point in the utility pole-to-house link, when the microwave receiver/antenna combination could be mounted directly on the  roof of the house and a short cable dropped down inside, or better still, a wireless router could be built right into the unit, and broadband access would be available anywhere in the house with no connection to the powerline at all, except to power the unit.

Installing a coupler at the pole that could serve the (typically at least 3-4) homes on the secondary of a MV-220 step-down transformer is cheaper than a "truck roll" to install antennas on every house ... plus, it doesn't require coordination with the user ...

Having said that, I'm still reserving final judgement until I hear more definitive test results from Ed, but the initial reports seem to be CLEARLY better than the other "Access BPL" systems ...

73,
Carl - wk3c

[WA1GFZ]

looks like another stupid approach. I would think it a lot easier to run fiber to the house. At least the primary is no isolated but crap will radiate off the drop.
All the hardware up on the pole when it could be inside the house protected.