This paper addresses the design of a channel emulator for the data communication along in-vehicle power distribution networks. Power line communication technology is a promising solution that uses the same physical bundle of wires supplying energy to the large number of components spread within a car, with benefits in terms of budget and weight saving. The communication channel is described by means of a multipath representation while the different noise contributions, supported by a dedicated measurement campaign, include impulsive and very low frequency disturbances. The channel emulator is designed on a Virtex-6 FPGA with a target working frequency of 200 MHz. The proposed emulator has very high programmability and is proven to provide superior performance in terms of bandwidth compared to known state-of-the art hardware non automotive alternatives.
I. INTRODUCTIONPower line communication (PLC) is an attractive technology aiming at reusing existing wires for communication purposes. Initially it gained consideration from researchers and industry for low rate narrow band applications (for instance automated meter reading) in the access domain. At the end of the last century, high rate wide band PLC solutions have begun to be studied for in-home connectivity and successful standards appeared around 2005. Since it has been widely recognized that the power line channel is rather an hostile environment for communications purposes (high and frequency selective attenuations, impulsive noise, etc.), researchers have made several efforts to characterize it, in order to develop proper communication protocols. Moreover, physical channel emulators have been developed: these emulators enable designers testing and refining their prototypes. The advantage is both using an environment similar to the one where future products will be deployed and, while benefiting of real transmitters and Manuscript
