The Alliance, membership of which is open to any company involved in power line communications (PLC) product development or usage, promotes an open communication standard. This ensures that HomePlug specification-based technology can be adopted throughout the world rather than a closed proprietary approach that limits adoption.
Renesas Technology already supplies microcontroller devices for power line communications (PLC) applications such as automatic meter reading (AMR) and automatic meter management (AMM). These ICs employ the baseline communications techniques from Yitran, another contributing member of the alliance whose IT8000 technology has already been selected by the HomePlug Alliance for command and control applications.
Furthermore, leading utility companies, the HomePlug Powerline Alliance and ZigBee Alliance have joined forces to develop a common, integrated application layer solution for AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure) and HAN (Home Area Network) applications. Renesas Technology offers the widest choice of microcontrollers for these applications, covering both wired (PLC) and wireless (ZigBee) solutions all based around its powerful M16C CPU core. With an extensive knowledge of communications networks and associated technologies, Renesas Technology looks forward to working with the HomePlug Powerline Alliance to contribute its knowledge into working groups addressing the development of AMI and HAN specifications.
