Automotive Power-Line Communication Channels: Mathematical Characterization and Hardware Emulator

This paper addresses the design of a channel emulator for the data communication along in-vehicle power distribution networks. Power-line communication technology is a promising solution that uses the same physical bundle of wires supplying energy to the large number of components spread within a car, with benefits in terms of budget and weight saving. The communication channel is described by means of a multipath representation while the different noise contributions, supported by a dedicated measurement campaign, include impulsive and very low-frequency disturbances. The channel emulator is designed on a Virtex-6 FPGA with a target working frequency of 200 MHz. The proposed emulator has very high programmability and is proven to provide superior performance in terms of bandwidth compared to the known state-of-the-art hardware nonautomotive alternatives.