Theoretical approach to the feasibility of power-line communication in aircrafts

In the domain of aeronautics, the future more electric aircraft will have to face a difficult issue related to the increasing number of wires and connectors, impacting on the weight and system reliability. A possible solution for solving at least part of this problem is to introduce power-line communication for specific applications. In this paper, the cabin lighting and communication system has been chosen as an initial scenario. Indeed, the tree-shaped architecture of the cabling is complicated enough to be representative of many other aircraft harness configurations. Channel characteristics are first determined from a propagation model based on the multiwire transmission-line theory. A software tool simulating PLC communication has been developed. By introducing the predicted channel transfer functions of different links into this software, the throughputs that can be reached, taking into account the electromagnetic constraints related to aeronautic standards, are discussed.