A Realistic HomePlug-AV Simulator for In-Home Network Services Planning

In this work, a network simulator for power line communications based in the Homeplug-AV technology is presented. The simulator implements both the physical and the MAC layers, along with an in-home power line channel generator, which makes it very useful in a wide variety of network optimization procedures. To the authors' knowledge, performance evaluation of the MAC layer of Homeplug-AV by means of simulations has been always accomplished assuming excessively simplistic channel conditions. Therefore, this simulator represents an important contribution, as it includes a realistic physical model along with the CSMA/CA protocol described in the standard. In this paper, the proposed simulator is employed to evaluate the performance of the Homeplug-AV standard in an in-home network. The obtained results are then applied to video services planning in networks based in this standard.