What is CEBus?
This page covers CEBus technology basics. It covers CEBus protocol stack, CEBus packet structure used for IoT(Internet of Things) based home automation.
CEBus refers to Consumer Electronic Bus. This standard is defined by EIA which descibes communication between electronic products in the home using six different medias. The physical medias used to carry signal are Power Line Bus, infrared, Radio Frequency Bus, Twisted Pair Bus, CoaX Bus and Fiber Optic Bus.
It is also known as LAN for home automation. CEBus is a packet oriented, connectionless, peer to peer network which utilizes CSMA/CDCR protocol. The first version of CEBus standard was released as IS-60 in the year 1992. It was later revised in 1993/1994.
CEBus products consists of two parts viz. a transceiver and a microcontroller. CEBus commands are developed for different applications e.g. fast forward, volume up, rewind, pause, temperature up/down etc. These commands are developed using CAL(Common Application Language).
CEBus supports two type of channels e.g. Control channel and data channel. Control channel is used for connetion oriented functions. Data channel is used for intensive data transfer. The table-1 below mentions CEBus technology features.
Specification | CEBus SUPPORT |
---|---|
System type | PLC 100 to 140KHz spread spectrum |
Speed(Commands/sec) | 5 to 10 per second |
Two way communication | supported |
Central Controller | Required |
Data rate | 10 Kbps |
Spread spectrum | Supported, CEBus powerline carrier spreads the signal over 100Hz to 400Hz during each bit in the packet. |
Type of channels | Control Channel and Data channel |
CEBus Protocol Stack

The figure-1 mentions CEBus protocol stack and their functions. It is mapped to four layers of the OSI stack viz. physical layer, data link layer, network layer and application layer. CEbus specifies physical features of the medias and application language interpreter.
CEBus Packet Structure

The figure-2 mentions CEBus packet structure for RF & Powerline medias.
CEBus packet = {LPDU(Link Protocol Data Unit), NPDU(Network Protocol Data Unit) , APDU(Application Protocol Data Unit),
CAL message, CRC }
CEBus packet vary in size from approx. 50 bits to about 350 bits depending on the size of CAL message as well as content of headers.
IoT Wireless Technologies
➤WLAN ➤THREAD ➤EnOcean ➤LoRa ➤SIGFOX ➤WHDI ➤Zigbee ➤6LoWPAN ➤Zigbee RF4CE ➤Z-Wave ➤NFC ➤RFID ➤Lonworks ➤CEBus ➤UPB
Difference between INSTEON and Z-wave, Zigbee, X10 and HomePlug
Difference between INSTEON and Zigbee
Difference between INSTEON and X10
Difference between INSTEON and HomePlug
Difference between INSTEON and Z-wave
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