Can broadband over powerline carry 2 signals over the same power line?

Question

Can broadband over powerline carry 2 signals over the same power line ? If so how does it decode them and know which data stream its looking for. Eg. with a cat6 network each device has its own cable running back to the network switch, but with a powerline network it seems the data will all be running over the same line ?

The reason i ask is because we are currently looking at installing a Sky Q (Sky is the UK satellite television provider, and the Q range is their latest product line up that allows set top boxes in rooms that do not have a coaxial ports) they do this by distributing the AV data over the homes powerlines, i would guess in a similar way to an HDbaseT AV matrix would distribute HMDI video and audio over Cat6. Sky Q seems to run exclusively over the powerline, with no option for running it through a cat5e / cat6 or wifi network.

Answer 1

I use TP link power line adapters at home, and we have 5 of them dotted around the house. 1 for the router, 4 for rooms in the house. All 5 can communicate.

Its an interesting question, and I have just done some research on whether or not the devices are half-duplex, or full duplex (In other words, they can send and receive at the same time.)

Providers like netgear Say their devices are full duplex. In otherwords they can send and receive at the same time. In order to achieve this they will use what is called multiplexing. The long story short is that multiplexing allows several signals to go down the same line at the same time. They are at different frequencies and therefore do not interfere with eachother.

The best example of this is wireless. 2.4ghz has 14 channels (Yes there is some overlap and therefore interference in this case!) for communication to be spread across. If I talk on channel 1 and you talk on channel 6, we should not interfere with eachother.