The IEEE working group devoted to developing a standard for Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) has approved provisions for a MAC/PHY and Inter-System Protocol. 
In a press statement, the IEEE said it is developing a new standard, IEEE P1901, “Standard for Broadband over Power Line Networks: Medium Access Control and Physical Layer Specifications.” When completed, the project will present a standard for high speed (>100 Mbps at the physical layer) communication devices via alternating current electric power lines, so-called Broadband over Power Line (BPL) devices.
Technical Subgroup 2 (TSG2), which is dedicated to FFT and Wavelet MAC/PHY, presented thirteen revised chapters of the draft Standard on MAC/PHY layers and security.
Technical Subgroup 4 (TSG4), which is dedicated to coexistence, presented a draft annex describing the Inter-System Protocol (ISP) that enables various BPL devices and systems to share communication resources (frequency/time) when installed in a network with common electrical wiring. ISP will allow P1901-compliant devices and ITU-T G.hn-compliant devices to co-exist. The protocol provides configurable frequency division for Access and time division for in-home with a granularity compatible with the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the most demanding audio and video applications.
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