Provided are methods and systems for terrestrial data transmission between aircrafts and external networks connected to gates at airports. This type of data transmission is performed through an electrical power cable that includes multiple conductors interconnecting electrical components of an aircraft and a gate. Each conductor may be used to establish a separate broadband over power line (BPL) communication channel using its own frequency range that does not overlap with frequency ranges of other channels. As such, no radio frequency (RF) shielding is needed in the cable and any standard multi-conductor cable may be used. A channel management unit is used to control allocation of data domains among different communication channels depending on characteristics of the data domains, characteristics of the channels, and other factors. For example, one channel may be designated for secure data transfer of specific data domains, such as aircraft control data.

A system for communicating data over power utility lines includes a plurality of endpoint devices. The endpoint devices can have modulation circuits configured and arranged to modulate data using multiple-orthogonal frequency sub-channels. The endpoint devices can also have a power line interface circuit configured and arranged to transmit the modulated data over a power utility line. A detection module can be configured and arranged to detect undesirable post modulation of a communication from one of the plurality of endpoint devices and to generate a signal responsive to the detected post modulation. The endpoint devices can then set a spacing between the multiple orthogonal frequency sub-channels in response to the signal responsive to the detected post modulation.

In a disclosed embodiment, a method for communication in a network includes receiving, at a first device registered to the network, a physical layer (PHY) frame that includes a PHY header and a MAC header. The PHY frame may further include a MAC payload. The PHY header includes a destination address field. The method further includes comparing a network address of the first device to the destination address field to determine whether the destination address field stores a value having the same number of bits as the network address. When the comparison indicates that the value stored by the destination address field does not have the same number of bits as the network address, the method skips decoding the MAC header and the MAC payload.

Power Line Communications (PLC) device for enhanced carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocols are described. The PLC device includes a modem, an AC interface and a PLC engine. The engine is configured for transmitting PLC packets over a plurality of electrical wires using a particular channel. Transmitting a normal priority packet may include attempting to access a communications channel to transmit a frame after a backoff time proportional to a randomly generated number within a contention window (CW), the CW having an initial value carried over from a previous transmission of a different frame. Additionally or alternatively, some of techniques described herein may facilitate the spreading of the time over which devices attempt to transmit packets, thereby reducing the probability of collisions using, for example, Additive Decrease Multiplicative Increase (ADMI) mechanisms.

The present disclosure outlines mechanisms, systems, methods, techniques and algorithms that gateway devices and powerline communication (PLC) networks can follow to mitigate adverse effects from the aforementioned inter-network interference. Although the present disclosure provides implementation details for G.hn and VDSL2, the mechanisms, systems, methods, techniques and algorithms described herein are equally applicable to other similar technologies. Therefore, when referring to non-implementation specific systems, methods, techniques and algorithms the term PLC is used to refer to a powerline network and the term customer premises equipment (CPE) is used to refer to a home-gateway device.

An electric system, method, and computer-readable medium facilitate shared access to a shared power line for communication using a PLC protocol. The electric system, method, and computer-readable medium may determine when the shared power line is available for a transmission, allocate unicast transmission time slots to each of a plurality of inverters, transmit a multicast message requesting that each of the plurality of inverters communicate information during its allocates transmission time slot, determine whether a first inverter in the plurality of inverters did not communicate using the shared power line during its allocated unicast transmission time slot, and if the first inverter did not communicate information during its allocated unicast transmission time slot, transmit with the line interface a jam signal during the first inverter's unicast transmission time slot.

Disclosed embodiments include a system having one or more member devices coupled to a network and a power line communication (PLC) device. The PLC device is configured to identify available bootstrapping agents that correspond to the one or more member devices, each available bootstrapping agent having a corresponding personal area network (PAN) identifier, identify a target network having a PAN identifier to join, select a target bootstrapping agent from available bootstrapping agents associated with the target PAN identifier to use for a join process with the target network, attempt to join the target network using the target bootstrapping agent, and when the attempt to join is successful, transmit and receive PLC signals over at least one power line associated with the target network using a particular frequency band and a modulation scheme.

A power line communication method for realizing data communication between at least one first or sending power line communication partner device and at least one second or receiving power line communication partner device. The method checks transmission conditions of a plurality of possible communication channels, thereby generating transmission condition data descriptive for the communication conditions of the respective possible communication channels. Additionally, communication conditions of the plurality of possible communication channels are selected as actual communication conditions based on the transmission condition data.

A physical layer (PHY) data frame for use in conjunction with processor in a node, processor coupled to a program memory for storing a sequence of operating instructions. The frame has a preamble, PHY header, a MAC header and a MAC payload. The PHY header includes a destination address field having a destination address therein. The destination address is used by the processor to determine match with the node address.

Transmission over a communication channel using carrier sense multiple access collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) may be performed by determining for each frame if the communication channel is busy after a backoff time proportional to a randomly generated number within a contention window (CW). When the channel is not busy, a frame of data may be transmitted. When the channel is busy, the device may periodically determine if the communication channel is busy after subsequent backoff times. The value of CW is adjusted for each subsequent backoff time using a fairness protocol, in which the value of CW is increased until the value of CW reaches a maximum CW value; and then the value of CW is held until a fairness number of backoff repetitions reaches a fairness threshold; then the value of CW is reduced incrementally until the value of CW reaches a minimum CW value.