Abstract: A power line communication (PLC) device includes a physical layer module including a transceiver configured to transmit and receive data over a power line. A medium access control (MAC) module is configured to send data to and process data from the physical layer module. The MAC module includes a channel access module configured to initiate a channel access attempt. The channel access module successively is configured to increase a random backoff period for a subsequent channel access attempt based on a random backoff function in response to a determination by the physical layer module that a PLC channel is busy during a preceding one of the channel access attempts. The channel access module successively is configured to selectively reset a variable in the random backoff function based on an output of a modulo function of a number of backoff attempts and a predetermined number.