Simultaneous Powerline and Wireless Smart Grid Communications Testbed

Junmo Sung and Brian L. Evans, The University of Texas at Austin

Version 1.0 was released on September 14, 2016.

Two-way smart grid communication is enabled by either powerline
communication (PLC) or wireless communication technologies. Utilizing
both technologies for simultaneous transmission can potentially enhance
communication reliability, and many diversity combining schemes have
been proposed. However, their assumptions may break under realistic
conditions. We have developed a flexible real-time testbed to evaluate
various diversity combining schemes over physical channels.

Software Requirements

  * LabVIEW 2015 SP1
  * LabVIEW Real-Time Module
  * LabVIEW FPGA Module
  * LabVIEW Modulation Toolkit
  * NI FlexRIO 15.5 (including NI FlexRIO Adapter Module Support)
  * NI-FGEN 15.0
  * NI-SCOPE 15.1.1 

Hardware Requirements

  * PXI-1045 chassis (PLC)
      o PXI-8106 controller (RTOS)
      o PXI-5421 signal generator
      o PXI-5122 digitizer 
  * PXI-1082 chassis (Wireless)
      o PXIe-8133 controller (RTOS)
      o PXIe-7965R FPGA module
      o NI-5791 RF adapter module 
  * BNC cables and VERT 2450 antennas
  * Ethernet router 

Hardware does not have to be exactly identical to the above list. The
list includes hardware used for code development.

How to run

 1. Run both controllers in the RT mode, and discover them from a
    desktop/laptop on NI MAX. All of them should be on the same local
    subnet.
 2. Open two top-level VIs for the PLC and wireless systems. Their names
    are 'top_wireless.vi' and 'top_PLC.vi', and each of them is located
    under each PXI RT target in the project explorer.
 3. Set 'Tx', 'Rx' and 'RIO Devices' to your hardware, and run both
    top-level VIs. You may run either of them first.
 4. When the 'system status' indicator on the PLC system front panel
    reads 'Ready' and the 'FPGA Running' indicator on the wireless
    system front panel is ON, click on the 'Send' button on the wireless
    system front panel. You will see constellation diagrams on both
    front panels.
 5. Play with controls and modify subVIs as needed. 

Reference

J. Sung and B. L. Evans, “Real-Time Testbed for Simultaneous Powerline
and Wireless Smart Grid Communications”, Proc. IEEE International
Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Mar. 5-9, 2017,
submitted.
http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~bevans/papers/2017/smartGrid/index.html
