Comparative Performance Analysis of Recent Powerline and Wireless Technologies for Multimedia Home Networking

This paper provides a comprehensive performance analysis of recent wireless and powerline technologies for home and small office environments. The recently developed 200Mpbs Powerline modems (HomePlug AV, UPA-DHS and HD-PLC) and IEEE 802.11g and 802.11n wireless technologies are compared and evaluated in a 2200 square feet home in Florida, USA. The paper presents a brief discussion of the respective PLC and wireless technologies and then gives the results of comprehensive experimental measurements and testing of these technologies with the UDP and TCP protocols as well as with High Definition TV streaming media at 25 Mbps.