Simulations in GAD project: BPL networks

This paper presents the simulation tasks carried out by CITIC in the framework of the Spanish R&D project Gestión Activa de Demanda (Active Demand Management), with the acronym GAD. Before the actual development of the hardware and software in the GAD project, the entire system architecture was defined. During this initial phase two simulation tasks were performed in order to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of GAD communications both inside a potential customer’s home as well as in the upper levels of the electric distribution network. CITIC, working for Ericsson as a research organization, has carried out a specific task to simulate an in-home Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) network, applying the recently developed network simulator ns-3. New features have been added to this simulator in order to complete this task.