The HomePNA Alliance is an incorporated non-profit industry association of companies that develops and standardizes technology for

home network A home network or home area network (HAN) is a type of computer network that facilitates communication among devices within the close vicinity of a home. Devices capable of participating in this network, for example, smart devices such as netwo ...

ing over the existing

coaxial cable Coaxial cable, or coax (pronounced ) is a type of electrical cable consisting of an inner conductor surrounded by a concentric conducting shield, with the two separated by a dielectric ( insulating material); many coaxial cables also have a p ...

s and

telephone wiring A telephone line or telephone circuit (or just line or circuit industrywide) is a single-user telecommunication circuit, circuit on a telephone telecommunication, communication system. It is designed to reproduce speech of a quality that is un ...

within homes, so new wires do not need to be installed. HomePNA was developed for entertainment applications such as

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV) is the delivery of television content over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. This is in contrast to delivery through traditional terrestrial, satellite, and cable television formats. Unlike downloaded media, ...

which require good

quality of service Quality of service (QoS) is the description or measurement of the overall performance of a service, such as a telephony or computer network, or a cloud computing service, particularly the performance seen by the users of the network. To quantitat ...

(QoS). HomePNA 3.1 uses frequencies above those used for

digital subscriber line Digital subscriber line (DSL; originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that are used to transmit digital data over telephone lines. In telecommunications marketing, the term DSL is widely understood to mean asymmetric di ...

and analog voice calls over phone wires and below those used for broadcast and

direct broadcast satellite Satellite television is a service that delivers television programming to viewers by relaying it from a communications satellite orbiting the Earth directly to the viewer's location. The signals are received via an outdoor parabolic antenna comm ...

TV over coax, so it can coexist with those services on the same wires. HomePNA does not manufacture products, although its members do. HomePNA creates industry specifications which it then standardizes under the

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

(ITU) standards body. The HomePNA Alliance, tests implementations, and certifies products if they pass. HomePNA promoter companies are AT&T Inc.,

Technicolor SA Vantiva SA, formerly Technicolor SA, Thomson SARL, and Thomson Multimedia, is a French multinational corporation that provides creative services and technology products for the communication, media and entertainment industries. Vantiva's headq ...

Pace plc Pace plc was a British company who developed set-top boxes (STBs), advanced residential gateways, software and services for the pay-TV and broadband services industry. Pace's customers included cable, telco, satellite and IPTV operators. The c ...

Sigma Designs Sigma Designs was an American public corporation that designed and built high-performance system-on-a-chip semiconductor technologies for Internet-based set-top boxes, DVD players/recorders, high-definition televisions, media processors, digital ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

, Sunrise Telecom and K-Micro. Devices that use HPNA technology as part of whole-home multi-media content products include Advanced Digital Broadcast, Inneoquest and NetSys. Alternatives to HomePNA include:

Power line communication Power-line communication (also known as power-line carrier or PLC) carries data on a conductor that is also used simultaneously for AC electric power transmission or electric power distribution to consumers. A wide range of power-line communicat ...

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

, data over cable, and multimedia over coax.

History

It was formerly the Home Phoneline Networking Alliance, also known as HPNA. HomePNA 1.0 technology was developed by Tut Systems in the 1990s. HomePNA 2.0 was developed by Epigram and was approved by the

ITU The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

as Recommendations G.9951, G.9952 and G.9953. HomePNA 3.0 was developed by

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

(which had purchased Epigram) and Coppergate Communications and was approved by the ITU as Recommendation G.9954 in February 2005. HomePNA 3.1 was developed by Coppergate Communications and was approved by the ITU as Recommendation G.9954 in January 2007. The original protocols used

balanced pair In telecommunications and professional audio, a balanced line or balanced signal pair is a circuit consisting of two conductors of the same type, both of which have equal impedances along their lengths and equal impedances to ground and to other ci ...

telephone wire. HomePNA 3.1 added

Ethernet over coax Ethernet over Coax (EoC) is a family of technologies that supports the transmission of Ethernet frames over coaxial cable. History The first Ethernet standard, known as 10BASE5 (ThickNet) in the family of IEEE 802.3, specified baseband oper ...

. In March 2009, HomePNA announced a

liaison Liaison means communication between two or more groups, or co-operation or working together. Liaison or liaisons may refer to: General usage * Affair, an unfaithful sexual relationship * Collaboration * Co-operation Arts and entertainment * Li ...

agreement with the

HomeGrid Forum G.hn is a specification for home networking with data rates up to 2 Gbit/s and operation over four types of legacy wires: telephone wiring, coaxial cables, power lines and plastic optical fiber. A single G.hn semiconductor device is able to net ...

to promote the ITU-T

G.hn G.hn is a specification for home networking with data rates up to 2 Gbit/s and operation over four types of legacy wires: telephone wiring, coaxial cables, power lines and plastic optical fiber. A single G.hn semiconductor device is able to net ...

wired home networking standard. In May 2013 the HomePNA alliance merged with the HomeGrid Forum.

Technical characteristics

HomePNA uses

frequency-division multiplexing In telecommunications, frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is a technique by which the total bandwidth available in a communication medium is divided into a series of non-overlapping frequency bands, each of which is used to carry a separate ...

(FDM), which uses different frequencies for voice and data on the same wires without interfering with each other. A standard phone line has enough room to support voice, high-speed DSL and a landline phone. Two custom chips designed using the HPNA specifications were developed by Broadcom: the 4100 chip can send and receive signals over 1,000 ft (305 m) on a typical phone line. The larger 4210 controller chip strips away noise and passes data on. A HomePNA setup would include a HomePNA card or external adapter for each computer, an external adapter, cables, and software. A

low-pass filter A low-pass filter is a filter that passes signals with a frequency lower than a selected cutoff frequency and attenuates signals with frequencies higher than the cutoff frequency. The exact frequency response of the filter depends on the filter des ...

may be needed between any phones and their respective jacks to block noise. HomePNA adapters come in

PCI PCI may refer to: Business and economics * Payment card industry, businesses associated with debit, credit, and other payment cards ** Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of security requirements for credit card processors * Pro ...

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

, and

PC Card In computing, PC Card is a configuration for computer parallel communication peripheral interface, designed for laptop computers. Originally introduced as PCMCIA, the PC Card standard as well as its successors like CardBus were defined and devel ...

formats.

References

External links

ITU-T Recommendation G.9951 : Phoneline networking transceivers - Foundation
(HomePNA 2.0)
ITU-T Recommendation G.9952 : Phoneline networking transceivers - Payload format and link layer requirements
(HomePNA 2.0)
ITU-T Recommendation G.9953 : Phoneline networking transceivers - Isolation function
(HomePNA 2.0)
ITU-T Recommendation G.9954 : Phoneline networking transceivers - Enhanced physical, media access, and link layer specifications
(HomePNA 3.0 and 3.1)
ITU-T Recommendations: Series G
{{Home automation Computer network organizations Local loop

History

Technical characteristics

See also

References

External links