Microchip launches consumer-band power-line soft-modem development kit

CHANDLER, USA: Microchip Technology Inc., a leading provider of microcontroller, analog and Flash-IP solutions, announced a Power-Line Modem (PLM) PICtail Plus Daughter Board Development Kit (part # AC164142) that enables customers to easily incorporate power-line communication into their products.

The power-line soft-modem technology supported by the PLM PICtail plus daughter board enables consumer and industrial products to communicate using the same wiring that provides power, which creates an instant network at a low system and deployment cost. Based upon the scalable dsPIC33F Digital Signal Controller (DSC) architecture, the board uses a Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation scheme and operates in the popular consumer frequency band.

The soft modem interfaces with Microchip’s Explorer 16 Development Board and is supported with royalty-free schematics, demo code and software in source-code format, all of which is available for download at http://www.microchip.com/get/FTWN.

The trend towards power-line communication is growing in response to increasing market demands for connected products. Applications for power-line communication can be found everywhere that energy flows, such as in-home energy monitoring and control, industrial power-supply controllers, server farms, street lighting and more.

Microchip’s PLM PICtail Plus Daughter Board Development Kit comes with two nodes, providing point-to-point communication out of the box, meaning customers can have the PLM PICtail Plus daughter board running a selection of demos in a matter of minutes.

The BPSK scheme provides a robust modulation method that performs well in noisy environments, and the data rate of the power-line soft modem can be selected in software. Additionally, having a large selection of dsPIC33F DSCs to choose from allows the customer to select a device that matches the requirements of their application, and that optimizes performance and cost.