White broadband power line communication: Exploiting the TVWS for indoor multimedia smart grid applications

Balancing the energy production and consumption in smart grids influences the integration of new high-speed communication technologies, to support monitoring services. Sharing the television white space (TVWS) spectrum between licensed and unlicensed users has been recommended by the federal communications commission in 2004. Federal communications commission allows the unlicensed users to access both the very high frequency (VHF) and the ultra-high frequency channels in TVWS. On the other hand, broadband power line communication (BPLC) has drawn the researchers' attention over the last decade as a high-speed indoor communication technology. One application for BPLC is the multimedia service in smart grid applications. In this article, we present an overview of the standards, regulations, and channel models of the TVWS and BPLC as 2 separate technologies. We then propose the deployment of the BPLC technology in the TVWS VHF band to build up the white BPLC (WBPLC) communication systems. The WBPLC incorporates the TVWS and the BPLC technologies into multiple-input multiple-output communication systems in the VHF band. The simulation results show significant throughput enhancement in the WBPLC over both the TVWS and BPLC communication systems, indicating that WBPLC can be a promising technology to serve the growing needs for the multimedia services in future smart grids.