HomePlug AV is the latest, highest performing generation of technology from the HomePlug Powerline Alliance. It delivers high-quality network connections over existing powerlines within the home tailored for transmitting multiple high-bandwidth audio-video entertainment streams.
HomePlug AV employs advanced physical layer (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) technologies that provide a 200 Mbps class powerline network for video, audio and data. The PHY layer utilizes this 200 Mbps channel rate to provide a 150 Mbps information rate with robust, near-capacity communications over noisy powerline channels. The MAC Layer is designed to be highly efficient; supporting both Time Domain Multiple Access (TDMA) and Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) based access with AC line cycle synchronization. The TDMA access provides quality of service (QoS) guarantees including guaranteed bandwidth reservation, high reliability, and tight control of latency and jitter. The CSMA access provides four priority levels. AC line cycle synchronization provides superior channel adaptation in the face of common line cycle-synchronized noise.
HomePlug AV offers tight security based on 128-bit AES and makes provision for dynamic (automatic) change of the encryption keys and for several different user experiences in setting up security and admitting stations to the network. The design allows a station to participate in multiple AV networks. HomePlug AV offers several mandatory and optional co-existence modes enabling multi-network operation, hidden node service, and broadband over powerline (BPL) co-existence.
Mediaxtream is a flexible, robust, efficient, wideband multi-carrier PHY technology that is designed to deliver a channel rate of approximately 1Gbps on a variety of different mediums of different qualities. Whether on powerline, phoneline or coaxial cable, it can be operated simultaneously and independently to the HomePlug AV channel, offering almost limitless degrees of flexibility for different deployment topologies.
Offering very low latencies, mediaxtream works efficiently with xtendnet to maintain the low effective end-end latencies demanded by video, VoIP, and gaming applications.
It also operates over a wide dynamic range, even though it uses very low power levels in line with EMC regulations, making it very suitable for delivering video content even over the most demanding cable networks.
Mediaxtream coexists with all current powerline technologies, and when it is used over phonelines it coexists with POTS, HPNAv3.1 and all xDSL variants. Mediaxtream has the flexibility to occupy any of the available frequency ranges on the Coax cable, meaning that it can easily be made to coexist with DOCSIS, CATV, satellite TV or MoCA as required.
To improve coverage and performance each Gigle device includes an intelligent routing engine technology known as xtendnet.
For networks with more than two nodes, the xtendnet engine will monitor QoS and line rates to determine the best options for information delivery, and to try to ensure each node is reachable. For single channel HomePlug AV devices, xtendnet can decide to act as a normal HomePlug AV node or as a repeating node or as both.
When repeating, the node will regenerate and reamplify received signals for improved signal coverage.
For dual-channel devices, xtendnet can decide to either aggregate the two channels for greater performance, or keep the channels separated for independent routing. For example, if mediaxtream is used on coaxial cable, while HomePlug AV is used on powerline, xtendnet will determine if either channel should act as a repeater or not, and how traffic should be routed between the channels.
In this way the nodes will form a dynamically configured mesh network, which can use routing and repeating to attempt to provide the best coverage and performance. Adding more nodes rather than hampering performance will actual increase the coverage and routing options making the network more robust.
