Seminar sponsored by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and the Texas Analog Center of Excellence (TxACE)

Smart Grid Communications

Prof. Brian L. Evans

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Wireless Networking and Communications Group The University of Texas at Austin

bevans@ece.utexas.edu

In collaboration with PhD students Ms. Jing Lin, Mr. Yousof Mortazavi, Mr. Marcel Nassar, and Mr. Karl Nieman and R&D engineers Mr. Mike Dow (Freescale), Dr. Anand Dabak (TI), Dr. Il Han Kim (TI), and Dr. Khurram Waheed (Freescale)

Friday, December 14, 2012, 1:00pm-2:15pm
ECSS 3.503 - Osborne Conference Room
The University of Texas at Dallas

Slides - SRC Audio with Slides - Software Releases

Notes from IEEE Smart Grid Short Course - Tutorial paper - Video demos of impulsive noise

Note: Accessing the SRC audio with slides requires an SRC account and is best viewed by Internet Explorer.

Abstract

Smart Grid systems intelligently monitor and control energy flows in order to improve efficiency and reliability of power delivery. A local utility would receive customer load profiles from smart meters, and adjust power generation and energy distribution accordingly. Smart meters could transmit usage data over powerline or wireless links once per minute.

Smart Grid communication over outdoor power lines is attractive because it uses existing infrastructure. However, it is limited by the strong impulsive noise, esp. from power electronics and wireless signals, within the 3-500 kHz transmission band.

In improving reliability of outdoor powerline communication (PLC), we derive impulsive noise models using field measurements, develop receiver methods to mitigate the noise, and implement those methods in our real-time testbed. One of our impulsive noise models has been adopted by the IEEE 1901.2 PLC standard.

Research is supported by SRC GRC ICSS Task 1836.063 with sponsors Freescale Semiconductor, IBM and Texas Instruments. The PLC project Web site is

http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~bevans/projects/plc

Biography

Prof. Evans researches embedded real-time digital signal processing for communication and image processing systems. His research group develops theory, algorithms, design methods and full-system testbeds. He has published 200+ peer-reviewed journal/conference papers, and graduated 20 PhD and 9 MS students. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow "for contributions in multicarrier communications and image display". He received a US NSF CAREER Award.


Mail comments about this page to bevans@ece.utexas.edu.