Exploiting power line communications Power Line Communication
(PLC) uses existing power lines to send and receive data.
Electrical power companies use PLC to transmit operational data
relating to the power grid over many miles of electrical cable
to a central location. PLC can be exploited by engineers to
provide a communication link for a LED-based lighting system by
connecting it over the same lines that power the application.
This eliminates the need for a dedicated cable to act as a
communication link. Rather than implement the full PLC standard,
developers can employ a low data rate PLC implementation such as
Texas Instruments' PLC-lite, a simple, flexible standard that is
particularly applicable for low-cost applications requiring a
robust communications link e.g. simple light bulbs or wall
switches within a home network. Compared with more complex PLC
types (i.e. G3 or PRIME), there is a considerably lower cost per
link, owing to the lower data rate and reduced protocol
overhead. The flexibility of PLC