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GE Wei-chun, LUO Huan-huan
Shenyang University Of Technology.
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd.
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
ZHOU Gui-ping, MA Yi-ling
State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd.
Electric Power Research Institute
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Abstract—The Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication
makes full use of the power line which has already been laid as
the transmission medium, and does not require earthwork
construction and communication line laying, which can achieve
rapid construction. While, the wireless communication
technology provides a good solution to solve the problems of
high cost, poor flexibility and difficult installation and
maintenance of wired communication technology. In this paper,
based on the combination of medium voltage power line
broadband carrier communication technology and Low-Power
Wide Area Network(LP-WAN), proposes a communication
technology of remote power monitoring system combined with
wired and wireless, which can achieve real-time
communication of power system with low cost and long
distance.
Keywords²Power Line Carrier; Low Power Wide Area
Network; Power Monitoring System; Wireless power terminal
I. INTRODUCTION
At present, the backbone network for power system
communication mainly uses optical fiber communication
technology, which can provide sufficient bandwidth for
various kinds of information and automation applications, as
well as secure and reliable transmission services[1].
However, on the demand side of distribution transformer,
because of the difficulty of laying fiber and high cost, the
communication of power system is still difficult to issue the
"last kilometer" communication problem. The power line
communication is a kind of communication technology
which uses power line as communication medium to transmit
data information, and it mainly communicates via the
modulated carrier signal loaded on the existing power lines.
Thus, it also is called Power Line Carrier(PLC)
‹,(((
ZHAO Hong-hao
State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd.
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
GAO Qiang
State Grid Liaoning Electric Power Co., Ltd.
Electric Power Research Institute
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
Shenyang KK Electric Power Technology Co.,Ltd.
Shenyang, Liaoning, China
FU Li-na
Shanghai Electric Cable Research Institute Co., Ltd
Shanghai, China
communication. According to the different communication
carriers, the Power Line Carrier communication can be
divided into three different carrier communication
technologies: high voltage PLC[2]- [4], medium voltage
PLC and low voltage PLC.
With the development of PLC technology and the
requirement of intelligent construction of power grid, middle
and low voltage PLC technology is becoming more and more
popular. It is considered as the key technology to solve the
"last kilometer" communication problem of power system.
However, for data communication, there are some problems
in PLC, such as the unsatisfactory channel, the high variety
of channel in time, great signal fading, the serious
interference by the clutter, and so on[5].
In the power system communication, micro-power
wireless and other short-range wireless communication
technology has been applied, that emphatically solving the
problem of information collection and transmission in short-
range network. However, on the issue of "last kilometer"
communication problem[6], short-range wireless
communication technology cannot overcome obstacles in
distance, and it is difficult to meet the demand for power
communication. While, if use GPRS, 3G, 4G and other
mobile communications technology, although the
implementation is simple, there are series of problems such
as high cost and poor security for long-term renting public
network channel. Especially, when the public network is in
rush hours, it cannot meet the power system communication
on real-time, reliability and other aspects of strict
requirements. By contrast, Low-Power Wide Area Network
technology has the characteristics of low cost, low power
consumption, wide coverage and large connection. It can
meet the needs of long distance real-time communication.
 II. THE PRINCIPLE OF POWER LINE CARRIER
COMMUNICATION
Power line carrier communication system mainly consists
of three parts: power line carrier equipment, power line and
coupling equipment. The coupling device comprises a
plurality of devices, including a line wave blocking device
(abbreviation: GZ), a coupling capacitor(abbreviation: C)
and a combination filter(abbreviation: JL) (also referred to as
a combining device), and a high-frequency
cable(abbreviation: GL). It forms a high frequency channel
with a power line which is shown in Fig.1. The power line
can transmit high frequency signals while transmitting the
electric energy, and realize the double application of the
power line[7].
Power line
GZ GZ
JZ JZ
GL GL
Carrier Carrier
equipment equipment
Signal Signal
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of power line carrier communication
The function of each component of the Power line carrier
communication system is shown below:
Power carrier equipment is mainly responsible for
modulation and demodulation, and its performance has a
direct impact on the quality of power line carrier
communication system.
The coupling capacitor C and combined with JL filter
composed of a band-pass filter, and its function is to prevent
the power frequency and the power frequency current on the
power line by high-frequency carrier signal, so as to ensure
the safety of the personal and the equipment.
Trapper GZ is connected in series between the power line
and bus. The purpose is to prevent the high frequency carrier
signal, which can prevent leakage of power equipment and
power line transformer on branch lines through the power
line, so as to reduce the substation and the branch line of the
high-frequency signal insertion loss and attenuation in a
substation power line.
III. LP-WAN ACCESS TECHNOLOGY
LoRa employs a spread spectrum technique based on
linear frequency modulation (Chirp) signals, which digitally
extend the original signal band to the entire linear spectrum
of the Chirp signal by modulating the Chirp signal. This
modulation and demodulation technology enhances the
performance of LoRa Wide Area Network(LoRaWAN) in
low power and wide area coverage from the bottom layer.
Based on the long-range low-power communication in the
physical layer LoRa technology, the design in the network
protocol and the architecture of LoRaWAN can further meet
the requirements of terminal network life, network capacity,
service quality, transmission reliability and security[8], etc.
Narrow Band Internet of Things(NB-IoT) is a technology
that is standardized by 3GPP to overcome the high power
consumption and distance constraints in the mainstream
cellular standard setting with using the licensed band
technology. NB-IoT adopts narrowband communication
technology, and has flexible deployment mode, so it can
optimize existing 4G network. It provides the following four
abilities. The first is wide coverage, because NB-IoT
increases 20dB by 100 compared with the existing network
gain, and the coverage area is expanded by two times sat
same frequency band. The second is the ability to support
massive connections, because NB-IoT a sector can support
100 thousand connections. The third is the lower power
consumption, because the standby time of the NB-IoT
terminal module can be up to 10 years[9]. The forth is the
lower cost of module.
Weightless-W adopts star topology, and the terminal
node can join and exit the network at any time without
affecting the normal work of other nodes. Weightless-W
proposes a solution for the use of television blank spectrum
only for the limitation of regional empowerment, but the
spectrum does not have regional universality, which greatly
impedes the development of the technology.
Sigfox is only for short message services in the Internet
of things applications. Its packet size is limited to 12 bytes,
and it also limits the occupancy time of a single node to the
channel resources[10], so that the network can serve more
nodes. In the physical layer, it adopts the ultra-narrow band
modulation mode, which has high spectrum efficiency
withless channel resources, and it has relatively high
flexibility in network deployment. In the aspect of network
architecture, it adopts star topology, and the terminal node
interacts with the base station directly and wakes up only
when the message is pushed. When the transmission is
completed, it enters a dormant state. The limit of its message
number being pushed greatly saves the power consumption.
It uses a fixed transmission rate without the need for
complex modulation.
IV. DESIGN OF POWER MONITORING SYSTEM BASED ON
PLC AND LP-WAN
Optical fiber Server
PLC gateway Firewall Power monitoring
center
Medium-Voltage
Power line
 PLC wireless

router
PLC wireless PLC wireless
router
router
Wireless power   Wireless power
terminal terminal
Wireless power
terminal
Fig. 2. structure diagram of power monitoring system
 Power monitoring system architecture based on power
monitoring system based on PLC and LP-WAN is shown in
Fig.2. It is composed of wireless power terminal, PLC
wireless router, PLC gateway, firewall, power monitoring
center, server, medium voltage power line and optical fiber
backbone network.
Sensor
module
Memory module
for fast data storage and reading. Wireless communication
module adopts wireless communication chip and antenna
according with LP-WAN technology. It can spread spectrum
modulation and demodulation. It has the characteristics of
low cost, low power consumption, strong anti-interference
ability and long distance communication. The modulation
Power and demodulation module can carry out OFDM modulation
interface
and demodulation, and generate high-frequency carrier
signals which can be suitable for broadband communication

communication
of PLC. The coupler module can load the high frequency

Wireless
module
Processor
module carrier signal to the medium voltage power line, and its
working frequency is greater than the high frequency signal
after OFDM modulation with ensuring that the signal is not
distorted. Meanwhile, the coupler module has the ability of
Energy module
dynamic impedance matching, can meet the working
Fig. 3. Wireless power terminal attenuation in the wide-band, and adapt to the transmission
The wireless power terminal is shown in Fig.3. It consists of high frequency signals in the medium voltage power line.
of energy module, processor module, memory module, Based on the function of each module, the following are
wireless communication module, sensor module and power the functions of each component of the power monitoring
interface. system. The wireless power terminal collects power, data,
Medium-Voltage
Power lin and sensor data and performs low power wide area wireless
Coupling module
communication with the PLC wireless router. PLC wireless
routers and wireless power terminals carry out low-power
Modulation wide area wireless communication, or communicate with
demodulation module other PLC wireless routers and PLC gateways for power line
carrier communication. The PLC gateway carries out power
Memory module

communication

line carrier communication with the PLC wireless router, or

Wireless
module

Processor
module
carries out fiber optic communication with the power
monitoring center and the server. Among them, the power
monitoring center provides a friendly service interface for
the user to monitor and manage the remote power system,
Energy module
and records and manages the real-time data. Firewall is used
Fig. 4. PLCWireless router
to ensure the safety of power data, and can prevent malicious
PLC Wireless router is shown in Fig.4. It consists of
attacks, identification, forgery and tampering and other
energy module, processor module, memory module, wireless
security issues.
communication module, modulation and demodulation
module and coupler module. V. RESEARCH ON DATA COMMUNICATION MODE
Medium-Voltage
Power lin

Coupling module
A. Uplink communication mode
Uplink communication is the gathering information
Modulation
demodulation module
reporting process from the wireless power terminal to the
power monitoring center. The wireless power terminal
acquires the data of the connected power equipment (such as
Memory module

Optical fiber

Optical fiber

electricity meter, data, etc.) through an electric interface, and

interface

Processor
module
acquires on-site data (such as temperature, humidity, etc.)
through various sensors in the sensor module. All data are
Energy module
processed by the processor module and processed by the
Fig. 5. PLC gateway wireless communication module or stored by the memory
The PLC gateway is composed of an energy module, a module. The transmitted data is spread spectrum modulated
processor module, a storage module, a modem module, a by a wireless communication module, and the spread
coupler module and an optical fiber interface, which is spectrum signal is sent to a designated wireless channel via a
shown in Fig.5. front-end antenna of the wireless communication module.
The system adopts modular design, and the energy The PLC wireless router receives the spread spectrum signal
module is connected with the fixed energy source to provide sent to the designated channel through the antenna of the
continuous and stable energy supply for other modules. The wireless communication module, and spread spectrum is
processor module is connected with each module which is further processed by the processor module after
responsible for data processing, conversion of various demodulation. High frequency modulation carrier signal is
protocols and so on. Memory module uses high-speed FLAH obtained by modulation and demodulation module to
transmit data by OFDM modulation. Then, through the
coupler module, the high frequency carrier signal is injected
into the middle voltage power line of 10kV level, and the
medium voltage power line broadband carrier
communication is carried out with other PLC wireless
routers or PLC gateways. The PLC wireless gateway
receives the high frequency carrier signal from the medium
voltage power line by the coupler module. The OFDM signal
is demodulated by the modulation and demodulation module,
and the acquisition data of the wireless power terminal is
obtained and further processed by the processor module. The
PLC gateway sends the pending data through the fiber optic
interface to the optical backbone network. The data in the
optical fiber backbone network arrives at the server and the
power monitoring center after the security check mechanism
of the firewall, and the user monitors, manages and stores the
data.
B. Downlink communication mode
The downlink communication mode is the command
release and control process of the power monitoring center to
the wireless power terminal. When the user needs to interact
with the wireless power terminal or control the wireless
power terminal, the corresponding instruction is sent by
operating the power monitoring center. Instruction data go
through the firewall, enter the optical fiber backbone
network and reach the PLC gateway. The PLC gateway
performs OFDM modulation on the command data to be
transmitted through the modem module to obtain a high-
frequency modulated carrier signal. Then, a high frequency
carrier signal is injected into the medium voltage power line
through a coupler module to realize the broadband
communication of the medium voltage power line carrier
with the PLC wireless router. The PLC wireless router
receives the high frequency carrier signal from the medium
voltage power line via a coupler module. The received signal
is demodulated by the modulation and demodulation module
to obtain the instruction data and is further processed by the
processor module. PLC wireless router transmits instruction
data through wireless communication module. After
modulation, it sends its front antenna to designated channel,
and carries out wireless LP-WAN communication with
wireless power terminal. The wireless power terminal
receives the spread spectrum signal sent to the designated
channel through its front end antenna of the wireless
communication module, and carries out spread spectrum
demodulation to obtain the instruction data to be executed.
According to the instruction, the wireless power terminal
performs the corresponding operation.
VI. CONCLUSION
PLC communication uses orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing and other modulation and demodulation
technology to process the signal. It has the characteristics of
high bandwidth, fast speed, good stability and strong anti-
interference, which has been widely used in power system.
For complex terrain areas (such as mountains, etc.), power
terminals are few and scattered with the difficulty and high
cost of building optical fiber communication lines. Wireless
communication technology provides a good solution to the
problems of high cost, poor flexibility and difficult
installation and maintenance of wired communication
technology. This paper presents a communication technology
of remote power monitoring system combined with wired
and wireless, which is proposed to solve the problems in the
mountainous and remote areas such as mountainous areas,
wiring difficulties, high cost, low power system
communication rate, real - time, reliability and so on.
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