Modeling & simulating power line communications on civil aircraft: First steps

This paper discusses the work done until now in the department of safety-critical systems & systems engineering inside the institute of flight systems of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the field of data communications over aircraft's power lines. This paper introduces the basic concepts of power line communications by providing a historical and technological background. Besides, it reviews the research done in this subject in the field of aeronautics and presents the models developed as a basis for simulating a point-to-point communication system that uses aircraft's AC power supply grid as the transmission medium. Additionally, a special attention will be paid to the model developed for the transmission channel by reviewing the literature available in the field of power line communications and power delivery. Analyzed literature states that most of the research made on PLC in the field of aeronautics has been made taking into account the DC power supply network and that this research has been supported on empirical tests, not in analytical processes. The work presented here as a part of the research work accomplished in DLR until now has shown that the characteristic parameters of the conductors installed in aircraft must be identified before a detailed and accurate model of the aircraft power supply network can be made.