Facilities in laboratory for the benchmarking of products for new services over NB-PLC

The use of higher frequencies is a promising feature for NB-PLC technologies since the speed of the communications and, hence, the efficiency of telemanagement services can be notably improved. Additionally, new services can emerge when using these extended bands. However, the electricity network is a hostile environment that hampers the on-field studies due to the variability of the conditions of the grid and the presence of wide types of noises, among others. Hence, the replication of representative real scenarios in controlled environments is an added value towards the characterization and modelling of NB-PLC, specially above 150 kHz. In this sense, this paper presents some laboratory facilities to benchmark the performance of NB-PLC up to 500 kHz in a controlled network. The work includes the identification of the most important parameters to be considered, the description of the facilities and a practical implementation of a real scenario.