An Embedded Communication Method for In-Home Energy Routers With Power/Signal Dual Modulation

This article proposes a novel embedded communication strategy for in-home energy routers (IHERs). It is based on the power/signal dual modulation (PSDM) principle and applied in the small-scale community energy local area network (E-LAN). The proposed communication strategy multiplexes power converters as data transmitters, and thus high cooperation and synchronization between power flow and information flow are achieved. In addition, system reliability is enhanced since communication module has practically the same reliability as the power module. A typical IHER’s structure and operation principles are presented, based on which the detailed design of embedded communication is proposed. For distributed power management of community E-LAN, both intra-IHER communication and inter-IHERs communication are involved, and their channels are modeled mathematically. IHER interconnection interface converters (IICs) play a significant role in power exchange between IHERs, and their operation modes are analyzed in detail. Finally, an experimental prototype is built to validate the feasibility of the proposed method.