Electri-Fi Your Data: Measuring and Combining Power-Line Communications with WiFi
Electri-Fi Your Data: Measuring and Combining Power-Line Communications with WiFi
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Electri-Fi 您的数据：测量电力线通信并将其与 WiFi 相结合
DOI：
10.1145/2815675.2815689
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发表时间：
2015
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Patrick Thiran
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. Vlachou;Sébastien Henri;Patrick Thiran
电力线通信（PLC）被广泛使用，因为它提供高数据速率，并在现有的无处不在的基础设施——电线上形成网络。PLC越来越多地被部署在结合多种技术的混合网络中，其中最流行的是WiFi。然而，到目前为止，还不清楚PLC可以在多大程度上提高网络性能，或者混合实现如何充分利用这项技术。我们比较了WiFi和PLC的时空变化。尽管PLC的潜力及其在商业产品中的广泛应用，但人们对其性能知之甚少。要在混合网络中路由或负载平衡流量，需要对PLC及其链路度量有扎实的了解。我们在140多个环节的测试台上进行实验。我们介绍了对PLC研究至关重要的链路度量，以及最近混合网络标准化所要求的质量感知算法。我们研究了PLC通道的时空变化，表明它们是高度不对称的，链路质量和链路度量时间变异性是密切相关的。基于我们的变异研究，我们提出并验证了一种仅使用帧报头的度量容量估计技术。我们还关注由于信道错误或争用（与延迟相关的度量）而引起的重传，并检查度量对后台流量的敏感性。我们的性能评估提供了对混合网络实现的洞察；我们简化了理解物理层和MAC层性能特征的复杂性。
Power-line communication (PLC) is widely used as it offers high data-rates and forms a network over electrical wiring, an existing and ubiquitous infrastructure. PLC is increasingly being deployed in hybrid networks that combine multiple technologies, the most popular among which is WiFi. However, so far, it is not clear to which extent PLC can boost network performance or how hybrid implementations can exploit to the fullest this technology. We compare the spatial and temporal variations of WiFi and PLC. Despite the potential of PLC and its vast deployment in commercial products, little is known about its performance. To route or load balance traffic in hybrid networks, a solid understanding of PLC and its link metrics is required. We conduct experiments in a testbed of more than 140 links. We introduce link metrics that are crucial for studying PLC and that are required for quality-aware algorithms by recent standardizations of hybrid networks. We explore the spatial and temporal variation of PLC channels, showing that they are highly asymmetric and that link quality and link-metric temporal variability are strongly correlated. Based on our variation study, we propose and validate a capacity estimation technique via a metric that only uses the frame header. We also focus on retransmissions due to channel errors or to contention, a metric related to delay, and examine the sensitivity of metrics to background traffic. Our performance evaluation provides insight into the implementation of hybrid networks; we ease the intricacies of understanding the performance characteristics of the PHY and MAC layers.