Panasonic will start licensing from January 2013 its newly-developed, broadband high-speed powerline communication (HD-PLC) technology that is designed to be incorporated into home appliances and suitable for smart house applications.

Called HD-PLC Inside, the new technology expands options for HD-PLC technologies, including HD-PLC IEEE 1901 Complete which is fully compliant with the IEEE 1901 standard.

The new HD-PLC Inside technology enables to reduce the size of an HD-PLC chip up to about one third of the size of existing HD-PLC IEEE 1901 Complete LSI. HD-PLC Inside also allows for minimizing the microcontroller's communication function and the size of an external memory, helping to lower the total cost of the embedded system. In addition, power consumption can also be reduced up to about one-third of that of an IEEE 1901 compliant HD-PLC 240Mbps class LSI.

The HD-PLC Inside technology can also be applied as a communication infrastructure of ECHONET Lite, which is recommended as a standard interface for home networking by Smart House Standardization Committee within the Japan Smart Community Alliance (JSCA). All HD-PLC products that are interoperable with the IEEE 1901 powerline communication specifications, including products using HD-PLC Inside, also comply with the European EN50561-1 standard, a new EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) standard for broadband powerline communication products recently approved by the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC).

Panasonic first began licensing its HD-PLC technology in 2010 and has since seen an expansion of the HD-PLC solutions as Japanese LSI makers launched sales of IEEE 1901 compliant HD-PLC chips. HD-PLC modules for embedded systems and HD-PLC adapters are offered in the market as well.