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EnVerv passes Interoperability Tests for Long-Range PLC

February 04, 2015 by Jeff Shepard

Semtech Corp. announced that the EV8000 Powerline Communications (PLC) SoC platform, from its EnVerv™ division, has successfully completed interoperability testing at the HomePlug Alliance Netricity™ interoperability event for long-range powerline communications. The interoperability event, held in Paris on January 20-21, 2015, confirmed interoperability of IEEE P1901.2 implementations exchanging IPv6 packets in the FCC-above-CELENEC band using various modulations and payload sizes. EnVerv is a leader in powerline and wireless communications system-on-chip (SoC) modems for smart grid applications.

The Netricity program addresses the need for long-range powerline networking for outside the home, Smart Grid, Smart City and industrial control applications. The technology can be used in dense urban and sparse rural communications using frequencies below 500 kHz. The technology also incorporates an IEEE 802.15.4-based media access control (MAC) layer that is key to enabling hybrid wired / wireless networks.

"We are pleased to achieve HomePlug Netricity interoperability with our EV8000 modem,” said Reza Mirkhani, Vice President of Smart Grid Solutions at Semtech. "By providing a fully programmable solution, we demonstrated our ability to interoperate in all of the frequency bands supported by the IEEE P1901.2 specification. Completing this round of interoperability tests gives our customers further confidence that their Semtech-based products can be successfully deployed in P1901.2 based networks worldwide.”

The EV8000 is a single-chip PLC SoC with programmable frequency bands, covering CENELEC-A, FCC and ARIB bands without the need for hardware changes. Furthermore, the EV8000 soft-modem can be programmed to operate in ITU-T G.9903 (G3-PLC), ITU-T G.9904 (PRIME), IEEE P1901.2 and IEC-61334 (S-FSK) modes simply by downloading the respective firmware code to the chip remotely over the powerline network. EV8000 has been successfully field tested with major utilities in Asia, the Americas and Europe. Successful MV and LV transmission has been conducted as well as thru-transformer data transmission, making a GPRS-FREE AMI network a logical choice for utilities.