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9 - A Carrier-current System for domestIc Remote Control
We shall first explain what carrier-current control is, taking the X-10 standard as a reference;
then, we shall describe the transmitter. The second part of this chapter will describe the re-
ceiver.
9.1 CARRIER CURRENT CONTROL AND THE X-10 STANDARD
Carrier-current is a means of wireless communication between two electronic devices. The
term “wireless” must be understood as “not needing to connect both devices by a special
cable”, since they are actually connected together, but only by the wires of the power line.
The basic principle of carrier-current transmission relies on the capability of the line to conduct
radio-frequency signals in addition to the AC power. Since the line has not primarily been de-
signed for that purpose, it is obvious that the performance of the line acting in this role is less
than ideal, and the following constraints must be taken into account:
The carrier frequency must be chosen so that is suffers the least attenuation from the
transmitter to the receiver.
The carrier power must be minimal to avoid radio-frequency interference, for the whole
wiring of a house involves tens or hundreds of meters of wire that constitute a antenna with
a large extent.
This translates into:
The best value for the carrier frequency lies in the 100-150 kHz range;
The voltage of the R.F. signal must be barely more than one volt.
The consequences are the following:
The frequency chosen is almost completely blocked by the electric meter, thus limiting the
extent of the usable wiring.
Due to the presence of various electric appliances, in particular light dimmers and brush-
type motors, the signal to noise ratio of the transmission can be very poor.
As a conclusion, only a low data rate can be expected, but with a significant error rate. This is
why several standards have been devised, providing various trade-offs between data rate,
error rate and system cost.
The X-10 standard described here under is oriented towards low cost. Thus, the data rate has
been deliberately sacrificed to provide a error rate sufficiently low to make a reliable system.
The following explanation comes from the X-10 theory found on the Web
1)
.
X-10 communicates between transmitters and receivers by sending a receiving signals over
the power line wiring. These signals involve short RF bursts which represent digital informa-
1 X-10 Technology Transmission Theory. Author: David Gaddis, August 14, 1995.
http://www.hometeam.com
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