1. Introduction
1.1
Introduction to the Cypress PLC Solution
Cypress’s Powerline Communication Solution (PLC) enables transmission of command and control
data over high voltage and low voltage powerlines. This solution is developed for low bandwidth
powerline communication.
The CY3273 PLC Low Voltage (LV) Evaluation Board demonstrates the ability of the Cypress
CY8CPLC10 to transmit data at 2400 bps over low voltage (12 V to 24 V AC/DC) powerlines.
This guide includes the following chapters:
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Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the Cypress PLC solution. It describes the contents of the
CY3273 evaluation kit and lists additional requirements to run the code examples, which are
included as part of the kit.
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Chapter 2 gives the functional and high level hardware description of the Cypress PLC LV
boards. It also describes the setup and operating procedure of the PLC LV board. It describes
features such as manual addressing, connection of USB-I2C bridge, and jumper settings with
examples.
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The Appendix contains the schematics, layout, and bill of materials.
1.2
Using the Cypress PLC Solution
Powerlines are one of the most widely available communication media in the world. The
pervasiveness of powerlines makes it difficult to predict its characteristics and noise. Because of the
variable quality of powerline, implementing robust communication over powerline has been an
engineering challenge for years. With this in mind, the Cypress PLC solution is designed to enable
secure, reliable, and robust communication over powerline. Some of the features of Cypress PLC
are:
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Integrated powerline PHY modem with optimized amplifiers to work with rugged low voltage
powerlines.
Powerline optimized network protocol that supports bidirectional communication with
acknowledgement based signaling and multiple retries.
Support for 8-bit packet CRC and 4-bit header CRC for error detection and data packet
retransmission.
Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA) scheme that minimizes collisions between packet
transmissions on the powerline.
The Cypress PLC solution consists of three key elements as shown in Figure 1-1.
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Powerline network protocol layer
Physical layer frequency shift keying (FSK) modem
Power amplification and coupling circuits
CY3273 Cypress Low Voltage Powerline Communication Evaluation Kit Guide, Doc. # 001-55382 Rev. *C
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