Title: Measuring, Modeling and Enhancing Power-Line Communications
Event details
| Date | 13.01.2016 |
| Hour | 10:00 › 12:00 |
| Speaker | Christina Vlachou, EPFL |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract:
Power-line communication (PLC) is a technology that has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it provides easy and high-throughput connectivity in residential and enterprise networks. IEEE has standardized PLC with the 1901 standard, and the HomePlug Alliance certifies products and provides specifications for different data-rates and applications. Furthermore, tens of vendors offer hybrid solutions with both Wi-Fi and PLC, thus yielding an extended coverage and relieving congestion in the network.
Despite its commercial success and wide adoption, PLC has received far too little attention from the research community. Two of the main reasons for this lack of research are the proprietary nature of the technology and the protocols' complexity. We overcome these barriers and build the foundations for understanding, evaluating, measuring, exploiting and boosting PLC performance. In this talk, I will first explore spatio-temporal variations of PLC and I will propose systematic guidelines for PLC link-metric estimation. Second, I will explore PLC performance in multi-user scenarios. I will justify the design choices of the MAC layer, which includes a CSMA/CA protocol similar to that of Wi-Fi, but much more complex. I will introduce a model for analyzing and boosting throughput for best-effort applications. Then, I will unveil that the PLC CSMA/CA is more efficient than that of Wi-Fi, but this efficiency comes at a cost: PLC is short-term unfair, thus introducing high jitter. In particular, there exists a tradeoff between throughput and jitter in PLC multi-user settings. I will provide configuration guidelines for tuning this tradeoff for delay-sensitive applications.
Biography:
Christina is a final-year PhD candidate in the Laboratory for Communications and Applications at EPFL, advised by Patrick Thiran. Her research is focused on enhancing both performance and reliability of network systems. To this end, she designs practical algorithms and bridges diverse technologies, such as wireless and power-line communications. She adopts a multidisciplinary approach that combines analytical tools, simulators, and network testbeds. Her work on PLC has received the best paper runner-up award at the IEEE ICNP 2014 conference. She has a broad range of research interests including wireless and mobile communications, multi-user performance, design of heterogeneous networks, and Internet-of-Things protocols and architecture.
During her PhD, she interned at Marvell and Qualcomm. At Qualcomm, she worked on the upcoming IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard. She also won an award at the “HackMobile” sixteen-hour intern hackathon for creating augmented-reality mobile applications. She received her diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering, in 2011, and the Papakyriakopoulos Award for excellence in Mathematics, in 2007, both from National Technical University of Athens.
Power-line communication (PLC) is a technology that has become increasingly popular in recent years, as it provides easy and high-throughput connectivity in residential and enterprise networks. IEEE has standardized PLC with the 1901 standard, and the HomePlug Alliance certifies products and provides specifications for different data-rates and applications. Furthermore, tens of vendors offer hybrid solutions with both Wi-Fi and PLC, thus yielding an extended coverage and relieving congestion in the network.
Despite its commercial success and wide adoption, PLC has received far too little attention from the research community. Two of the main reasons for this lack of research are the proprietary nature of the technology and the protocols' complexity. We overcome these barriers and build the foundations for understanding, evaluating, measuring, exploiting and boosting PLC performance. In this talk, I will first explore spatio-temporal variations of PLC and I will propose systematic guidelines for PLC link-metric estimation. Second, I will explore PLC performance in multi-user scenarios. I will justify the design choices of the MAC layer, which includes a CSMA/CA protocol similar to that of Wi-Fi, but much more complex. I will introduce a model for analyzing and boosting throughput for best-effort applications. Then, I will unveil that the PLC CSMA/CA is more efficient than that of Wi-Fi, but this efficiency comes at a cost: PLC is short-term unfair, thus introducing high jitter. In particular, there exists a tradeoff between throughput and jitter in PLC multi-user settings. I will provide configuration guidelines for tuning this tradeoff for delay-sensitive applications.
Biography:
Christina is a final-year PhD candidate in the Laboratory for Communications and Applications at EPFL, advised by Patrick Thiran. Her research is focused on enhancing both performance and reliability of network systems. To this end, she designs practical algorithms and bridges diverse technologies, such as wireless and power-line communications. She adopts a multidisciplinary approach that combines analytical tools, simulators, and network testbeds. Her work on PLC has received the best paper runner-up award at the IEEE ICNP 2014 conference. She has a broad range of research interests including wireless and mobile communications, multi-user performance, design of heterogeneous networks, and Internet-of-Things protocols and architecture.
During her PhD, she interned at Marvell and Qualcomm. At Qualcomm, she worked on the upcoming IEEE 802.11ax Wi-Fi standard. She also won an award at the “HackMobile” sixteen-hour intern hackathon for creating augmented-reality mobile applications. She received her diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering, in 2011, and the Papakyriakopoulos Award for excellence in Mathematics, in 2007, both from National Technical University of Athens.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- Cecilia Chapuis
Contact
- Babak Falsafi