A Reconfigurable Digital Platform for the Real-Time Emulation of Copper Access Networks

In this paper, a reconfigurable platform for the real-time digital emulation of copper access networks is presented. The instrument, using hard real-time DSP techniques on Xilinx Virtex II FPGAs, is capable of accurately reproducing the physical layer of a xDSL connection. The magnitude and absolute phase of the insertion and return loss of the twisted pair access loop consisting of cables with various characteristics and length is digitally emulated over the full VDSL bandwidth. The innovative character of the digital approach over conventional loop emulation techniques is demonstrated and its performance is assessed using several test cases