Overview
The INT6000 is Intellon’s first generation HomePlug AV-based IC. This IC opened new markets and made possible new home networking and media access applications based on reliable whole-house access to digital content. The INT6000 provides a highly integrated and optimized solution as the basis for high-speed powerline networking adapters and a wide range of embedded products.
Description
The INT6000 includes the medium access control (MAC) circuit and the physical (PHY) layer along with integrated control, memory buses and host interfaces, which include:
- MII PHY (IEEE 802.3u) interface for interconnection to Ethernet controllers
- MII Host/ DTE interface (IEEE 802.3u) for interconnection to Ethernet PHY
- Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) local bus
- Asynchronous Host Interface (AHI)
- Multiple MPEG Transport Stream (TS)
The INT6000 IC implements HomePlug AV technology, which is tailored to reliably deliver up to 200 Mbps over the harsh power line communication environment. The chipset combats deep attenuation notches, noise sources, and multi-path fading by using windowed OFDM, *Turbo Convolutional Codes, precise channel adaptation and noise mitigation based on AC line cycle synchronization.
Intellon’s HomePlug AV standard-based firmware controls the MAC and PHY functionality to ensure compatibility and interoperability among HomePlug AV-based products.
The MAC implements a mix of TDMA and CSMA/CA access protocols with prioritization and automatic repeat request (ARQ) for reliable delivery of packets. The TDMA mechanism provides strict QoS guarantees such as bandwidth reservation, tight control of latency and/or jitter, and quasi-error free delivery. These features are essential to provide efficient end-to-end delivery of broadcast quality High Definition and Standard Definition video streams over the harsh powerline environment.
The CSMA/CA protocol provides efficient delivery of asynchronous traffic. Built-in Quality of Service (QoS) features provide the necessary bandwidth for multimedia payloads including voice, data, audio, and video. An eight-level prioritized random access method is supported with strict adherence to priority. Segment bursting on the power line minimizes the demands on the receiver resources and maximizes the throughput of the network, while still providing excellent latency response and jitter performance. The contention-free access capability extends this concept of segment bursting to allow the transmission of multiple frames over the power line without relinquishing control of the medium.
The PHY section of the INT6000 IC provides the OFDM tone modulated broadband signal. The firmware controls channel estimation that determines optimal tone modulation up to 1024 QAM, 10-bit symbols. Intelligent channel optimization ensures the highest possible throughput and reliable operation.
Market Segments
The INT6000 offers the higher bandwidth performance necessary to drive home entertainment applications including High Definition (HD) and Standard Definition (SD) video distribution, TV over IP (IPTV), networked digital video recorders (DVR) and media center PCs. Other applications include whole-house audio, extension and bridging of high speed wireless technologies such as 802.11x and UWB, and higher data-rate broadband sharing based on technologies such as ADSL2+ and fiber to the home.
* France Telecom – TDF – Groupe des ecoles des telecommunications Turbo codes patents license
Links
INT6000 Product Brief
RD6000-Ethernet Reference Design Product Brief
RD6000-PLC Reference Design Product Brief
HomePlug AV White Paper
HomePlug AV Technology Overview
