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REMPLI D5.1b - PLC system model & simulation
Ref: HURRAY-TR-030305       Publication Date: 14, Feb, 2006

Abstract:
For the PLC network development within REMPLI project, the single frequency network (SFN) technology is adopted for the research part. However, the SFN technology only concerns the physical layer and parts of data link layer. The network layer protocol remains to be specified. This protocol must be efficient (i.e., with minimum protocol overheads and short data transfer delay) and cope well with the specific PLC channel characteristics (e.g. high packet error rate, dynamic path repeater level change, etc.).
As SFN is a new technology, its validation by field test is not yet possible. However the validation is an indispensable step towards the successful protocol design. So we propose in this project the validation of the SFN PLC network by performance evaluation, based on its models (both analytic and simulation ones). Moreover the model-based validation technique allows easier parameter and scenario changes, which is particularly interesting for PLC networks whose transmission characteristics strongly depend on the corresponding power lines whose exhaustive tests are just unfeasible.
This document mainly aims at building a simulation platform for evaluating REMPLI PLC system performance. The simulation models are built in a modular way to ease their independent modification and individual validation. The physical layer emulator implements all the functions of the physical layer as well as parts of those of the data link layer. The power line transmission characteristics for a given topology (called hereafter channel model) are described using a matrix. This physical layer emulator is coded in C in order that other high-level simulation tools such as OPNET and OMNeT++ can exploit it indifferently. The network layer simulator is implemented using OPNET simulation tool to facilitate the simulation task as well as the simulation results interpretation.
The performance evaluation using this simulation platform allowed us to get several important results, which helped us to specify an efficient network layer over SFN in terms of routing protocol and the repeater level adjustment algorithm while still maintaining a minimum network layer header. In addition, we also proposed an analytic model, which allowed us to compare two routing protocols: dynamic source routing of DLC1000 and flooding based routing of SFN. This comparison also showed that the flooding routing protocol of SFN outperforms the dynamic source routing of DLC1000. The simulation of these two protocols has also confirmed this conclusion. The transport layer simulator is also built but in OMNeT++. The objective is to build the REMPLI PLC network at transport layer in order to simulate a full REMPLI PLC network including multiple masters and bridges (while the network layer simulator only focuses on an autonomous one master to multiple slaves PLC network).

Gerd Bumiller

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Filipe Pacheco