Powerline Communication System-on-Chip in 180 nm Harsh Environment SOI Technology

Broadband powerline communication systems using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) can utilize existing power lines to transmit data packets alongside power distribution. Recent standards focus towards high speed multi-media in-house streaming. With improvements towards robustness and throughput new standards increase the speed and reliability of in-house powerline systems. A very different approach is the use of powerline communication systems in a deep drilling environment where temperatures of more than 150°C and pressure levels up to 30 000 psi are present. Typical applications in this environment usually do not require more than several kbit/ys per node and are more reliant on a stable and continuous connection. Here, a powerline communication system can reduce the amount of wiring needed and increase communication robustness significantly. This work provides a harsh environment suitable, reliable and standard compliant communication ASIC that is manufactured in XFAB 180 nm Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology allowing operating temperatures of up to 175°C. The die size is 5.25 mm x 5.25 mm and contains a complete Homeplug 1.0 communication stack with an environment for boot, interfacing and debugging. The data rate is as high as 6.1 Mbit/s using the fastest transmission mode and reaches the theoretical maximum of 0.55 Mbit/s in the robust OFDM (ROBO) mode which is of particular interest for harsh environment applications. To the best of the authors knowledge, this is the first OFDM-based powerline communication ASIC which is particularly designed for harsh environment.