Channel modeling and system performance for HomePNA 2.0

The new Home Phoneline Networking Alliance (HomePNA) 2.0 system is an attractive proposition for home networking since it potentially allows transmission rates comparable to those of Ethernet, using the existing installed telephone wiring. However, although the transmission standard is designed to be variable rate (variable symbol rate and bits/symbol), not all combinations are mandatory and it is, therefore, instructive to determine the level of receiver complexity required to handle the optional higher rates. An accurate channel model is devised, characterizing the home phone line network around 7 MHz, which allows the performance of the HomePNA 2.0 physical layer to be evaluated. The very good agreement obtained between the measured and modeled channel responses, in both time and frequency domains, enables a high degree of confidence in the simulation results. Due to the considerable dispersion observed in some home phone line channels, a number of equalizer structures are proposed to improve performance in the receiver. These are compared for each of the two possible symbol rates. Computer simulations show that the performance of the system can be greatly improved at the lower rate with a low complexity equalizer, but at the higher rate, which is not mandatory, a much more complex equalizer is required.