Multi-ant Colony Based QoS Networking Algorithm for Hybrid Power Line and Wireless Communication Networks

Today, and especially in the future, there is an increasing need for complementary techniques to meet the growing capacity requirements of wireless communications. A high data rate connection with power line communication (PLC) is one attractive solution to achieve this need. One way to improve the data rates obtained in PLC networks is to increase the used bandwidth and operate at higher frequencies. At the same time, however, it should be kept in mind that the power lines, unfortunately, act as quite good antennas which can detect strong near-by FM and TV signals. In the future, the PLC frequency range can overlap with the broadcasting frequency bands resulting in interference for these transmissions and vice versa. With the static notching the whole FM-frequency band is notched during the PLC communication. This may result in inefficient spectrum utilization as in a given place and at a given time only a part of the FM-frequency band may be occupied. In this paper, a blind spectrum sensing algorithm based on forward consecutive mean excision (FCME) algorithm is proposed to locate the free frequency bands inside the broadcasting frequency range in PLC-network. The performance of this sensing algorithm is analyzed using spectrum analyzer measurement results and calculations in the broadcasting frequency range. The results verify that the proposed method performs well when detecting free frequency bands in broadcasting frequency band providing means for better spectrum utilization in PLC-network.

Hybridisation of networks is a trend that will continue to evolve for more efficient communication solutions. Hybrid power line communication (PLC) and wireless networks deployed for the Internet of Things (IoT) applications have improved the efficiency of low-power and lossy networks (LLNs). State-of-the-art solutions on hybrid networks are mainly application specific and does not provide a mathematical model to evaluate the network performance. Furthermore, the parallel PLC and wireless networks result in more power consumption due to the additional circuitry required to support and switch between two networks. There is a need for a generalized study on hybrid network architectures. A mathematical model must be developed to evaluate the performance of hybrid networks. Unlike parallel PLC and wireless networks, some intermediate solutions must be proposed that can offer the benefits of wired and wireless networks without increasing power consumption and circuit complexity. The paper presents a generalized study on hybrid network architectures. A hybrid network has been proposed that can offer the benefits of wired and wireless networks in the best possible way. A novel Markov-based stochastic model has been developed to evaluate the reliability of hybrid network designs. The analytical results obtained from Continuous Time Markov Chains (CTMC) have been validated by simulation using MATLAB. Spectral and energy efficiency have been evaluated for the hybrid designs along with a trade-off analysis. The proposed hybrid network (with 50% jump nodes being hybridized) is 33.53% more reliable for data transmission than parallel wired and wireless networks after 100 hours of operation.

Exponential demand for broadband applications has elicited renewed interest in characterizing noise in power line communication (PLC) networks for optimal error performance analysis. PLC is economical and ubiquitous, however due to multipath phenomena and nonstationary impulsive noise, the PLC channel is very harsh to signal transmission. Recent studies reveal that PLC noise is cyclostationary and modelling its characteristic should exploit the spectral and temporal redundancy. In addition, preliminary research shows that PLC noise exhibits self-similarity and can be predicted by fractal theory. In modelling noise employing fractal theory, the Hausdorff dimension (D) needs to be approximated. D is related to Hurst parameter (H), which is a measure of self-similarity. Hence, it is important to estimate H for accurate noise prediction using fractal theory. H parameter estimators assume stationarity in time series data. Therefore, preprocessing is required for the case of PLC noise before estimating H to make it stationary as periodicity and nonstatioanrity affects the H estimators. In this study, we remove the periodicity hidden in the PLC noise obtained from measurement campaign within several university offices, workshops and laboratories. Then long-range dependence is estimated from this pre-processed noise data by employing three estimation algorithms: R/S (rescaled adjusted range) method, aggregated variance method and absolute values of aggregated series method. Results from the said estimation methods though not the same, show that the Hurst parameters obtained from various noise measurements are greater than 0.5, implying presence of self-similarity with long-term memory. Results from this study will find valuable applications in PLC noise modelling using fractal and chaos theory and in error performance analysis in both narrowband and broadband PLC systems.

There is a need to fulfill the growing capacity requirements of power line communication (PLC). One way to achieve higher data rates in PLC networks is to operate at higher frequencies and increase the used bandwidth. In the future, the increased PLC frequency range can overlap with several wireless communications systems resulting in interference for these transmissions and vice versa. Commonly used static notching results in inefficient spectrum utilization as in a given place and at a given time only a part of the frequency range may be occupied by other wireless systems. Some wireless signals like FM signals are very closely spaced. In practice it is impossible to utilize these narrowband unoccupied frequency bands. In this case we can cluster closely spaced signals. Guard bands around detected wireless signals must also be taken into account before defining usable frequency bands for PLC. In this paper, we use the 2-D LAD ACC algorithm to detect and cluster interfering signals. We also further develop the algorithm so that after clustering guard bands are added and reclustering, if necessary, is executed. The performance of this modified 2-D LAD ACC algorithm is analyzed using calculations and spectrum analyzer measurement results obtained from in-office PLC network in the frequency range 80–200 MHz. The results verify that the proposed method performs well by detecting and clustering continuous and non-continuous wireless signals and providing means for clever spectrum utilization in PLC-network.

This paper reports on findings on the analysis of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) hybrid power line communication (PLC) - visible light communication (VLC) system (PLC- VLC) based on ACO-OFDM in impulsive noise, when the perfect nulling technique is utilized to combat noise in the system. In this work, we develop theoretical expressions that describe the error floors realized in the system due to perfect nulling. Perfect nulling refers to a noise mitigation technique that perfectly identifies impulsive noise locations in a string of data samples and clips them to zero, leading to an error floor at a high Signal to Noise (SNR) ratio. Thus, the principal contribution of this paper is to analyze and derive theoretical Bit Error Rate (BER) expressions for the error floor achieved by a BPSK OFDM signal in the FFT hybrid PLC-VLC system based on asymmetrically clipped optical - orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM), in a channel corrupted with Added White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and impulsive noise. The derived theoretical BER results will be compared to the error floors obtained through simulations.

Power line communication is a critical component of smart grids, which are vulnerable to eavesdropping. To address this challenge, we investigate a cooperative relay hybrid power line and wireless communication system where multiple eavesdroppers are considered. We propose an elaborate artificial noise (AN)-aided beamforming (BF) scheme to improve physical layer security. Our scheme maximizes the outage-constrained secrecy rate (OCSR) of the legitimate link while restricting the capacity of the eavesdroppers to a reasonable region. However, due to the imperfect channel state information of the wiretap channel and secrecy outage probability constraint, the robust OCSR problem becomes intractable because of the non-concave secrecy objective function and the non-convex constraints. To solve this issue, we utilize semidefinite programming and Bernstein-type inequality to transform the robust OCSR nonconvex problem into two convex sub-problems, which a block-coordinated descent algorithm can solve. Simulation results showcase the effectiveness of our robust AN-aided secure BF scheme and show that the proposed scheme outperforms the benchmark scheme in a security performance gain under various channel conditions, even in the worst case.

The reliability and distance of Power Line Communication (PLC) are the most important factors, which limit the application of PLC in practice seriously. This paper discusses the specialties and the methods of building up the PLC networks, uses an improved Dynamic Ant Colony System algorithm (DACS) in dynamic routing of PLC networks, and the multi-path storage technology is given. The improved DACS enhanced the accuracy and efficiency of dynamic routing in two aspects, that is the best tours and the worst tours. A dynamic penalty on worst tours will open up chances for ants to navigate, limit intentions and provide cautions in an ant's decision to move. And ants can get better search guidance by concentrating only the best tours from all groups. The simulation and experimentation indicate that the improved DACS provides an effective dynamic routing method for the expansion of PLC. It is an effective method of improving the reliability of PLC.

Power line communication (PLC) over low-voltage grid, is an attractive technology for no-new-wiring networks. In such typical application fields as home networks and street lighting management system, PLC network is always vulnerable in robustness and the logical link is liable to be destroyed because of the different user's personalities and the special channel properties. To improve the robustness of PLC network, the reasons that lead to the failure of data link are revealed, and the main achievements of randomized initialization protocols for ad hoc networks are studied. According to the study results, a novel low cost intelligent control method in MAC protocol is proposed to automatically maintain the logical connectivity of the PLC network. The performance of the method is evaluated theoretically and experimentally.

Power line Communications (PLC) has gained a lot of interest for the last mile or access because the normal electric power line is utilized for transmission also communication signals. Considerable research effort has been extended on investigating the technologies about the physical (PHY) layer and the medium access control (MAC) layer. But the transmissions scheduling is still a key design problem, especially in multi-hop PLC networks. In this paper, a time slot reuse schedule (TSRS) is proposed, to scheduled access in the networks. It utilizes time slots assignment with special reuse for the nodes in the cell, to improve the channel efficiency. TSRS is an appealing concept for PLC networks, since there is always a manager controlling the network, and PLC networks are often master slave structure with tree topologies. For successfully preventing the potential collision between the nodes, the performance of networks is improved significantly, which is also corroborated by the simulation results.

Power-line communication (PLC) networks have been increasingly used for constructing industrial IoT (internet of things) and home networking systems due to their low-cost installation and broad coverage feature. To guarantee the transmission reliability, ARQ (automatic repeat request) scheme is introduced into the link layer of reliable PLC networks, which allows the retransmission of a data frame several times so that it has a higher probability to be correctly received. However, current studies of performance analysis for PLC MAC (medium access control) protocol (i.e., IEEE 1901) do not take into account of the impact of ARQ scheme. To resolve this problem, we propose an analytical model to investigate the MAC performance of IEEE 1901 protocol for reliable PLC networks with ARQ scheme. In the modeling process, we first establish a PLC channel model to reflect the impacts of PLC channel types (containing Rayleigh fading and Log-normal fading), additive non-Gaussian noise feature and ARQ scheme on data transmission at link layer. Next, we employ Renewal theory and Queueing dynamics to capture the transmission attempt behavior of executing IEEE 1901 protocol in the unsaturated environment with finite transit buffer size. On the basis of combining these two models, we derive the closed-form expressions of 1901 MAC metrics considering the influence of the ARQ scheme. Furthermore, we prove that the proposed analytical model has the convergence property. Finally, we evaluate the MAC performance of 1901 protocol for reliable PLC networks with ARQ scheme and verify the proposed analytical model.

Powerline communication (PLC) provides inexpensive, secure and high speed network connectivity, by leveraging the existing power distribution networks inside the buildings. While PLC technology has the potential to improve connectivity and is considered a key enabler for sensing, control, and automation applications in enterprises, it has been mainly deployed for improving connectivity in homes. Deploying PLCs in enterprises is more challenging since the power distribution network is more complex as compared to homes. Moreover, existing PLC technologies such as HomePlug AV have not been designed for and evaluated in enterprise deployments. To this end, we give guidlines for designing PLC networks for providing ubiquitous connectivity in enterprises, based on measurement study of PLC performance in enterprise settings using commodity HomePlug AV PLC devices. Based on our findings, we propose that careful planning of PLC network topology, routing and spectrum sharing can significantly boost performance of enterprise PLC networks.

Power Line Communications have been the subject of an important research work. At the same time, the growing demand for multimedia communications provides a good prospect for PLC as a promising transmission technique for the “last mile” access network. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a spectrally efficient multicarrier modulation technique for high speed data transmission over multipath fading channels. High Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) is a major drawback of OFDM. The high PAR of the OFDM signal has to be considered when setting the range of the digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and dimensioning the line-driver. This paper introduced an improved PAPR reduction scheme using constant envelope modulation. Furthermore, by utilizing continuous phase modulation (CPM) in a CE-OFDM system, the PAPR can be effectively reduced to 0 dB. The paper describes a CE-OFDM based modem for Power Line Communications (PLC) over the low voltage distribution network. Relying on a preliminary characterization of a PLC network, a complete description of the modem is given.

Power line communication (PLC) technology has created a niche use in the Internet of Things (IoT) by offering flexible and reliable connection among power-driven IoT devices/sensors over existing wired networks. In IoT over PLC networks, massive real-time data generated by the ever-growing connected devices will eventually pose an overwhelming burden on the IoT cloud, which in turn severely degrades the network performance. To cope with these issues, edge computing (EC) has emerged as a complement to cloud computing, aiming at offloading a portion of computing in the cloud to the network edges closer to the IoT devices. However, confronting a practical scenario that some electrical devices cannot communicate with wireless and mobile networks directly, existing EC paradigms may not be directly applied to IoT over PLC networks. In this paper, we propose a novel EC-IoT over PLC paradigm to reduce the transmission latency while migrating a portion of computing from the cloud to the edges. First, we develop a distributed EC platform to serve terminal users (TUs) in different IoT systems with various IoT services. Second, we put forth a cache-enabled scheme to store the popular contents from the cloud and edge sensors to reduce redundant data transmissions between TUs and the cloud. Finally, our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed EC-IoT over PLC network can significantly reduce energy consumption and transmission latency.

In this chapter, an introduction of communication networks and relaying strategies for SGs is presented, together with a discussion of how to improve spectral efficiency and coverage in relay-based ICT infrastructure for SG applications. Considering communication channel medium, there are two sets of networks in SGs, i.e., wired and wireless communication networks. Special attention is paid to the use of various relaying strategies in power line communication (PLC) and wireless communication networks.

As one of the most promising networking technologies, power-line communication (PLC) networks have been gradually used not only in home networking systems but also in industrial IoT (Internet of things). Current studies of PLC medium access control (MAC) protocol (i.e., IEEE 1901) only focus on the single-hop environment; however, in practical industrial IoT and home access communication systems, PLC networks generally utilize a multi-hop architecture. In addition, due to the difference in the MAC standard between 802 series and 1901, existing analytical models of multi-hop IEEE 802.11 wireless networks are not suitable for multi-hop IEEE 1901 PLC networks. In this paper, we propose a theoretical model for performance analysis of multi-hop IEEE 1901 PLC networks, where the impacts of traffic rate (containing relay traffic), buffer size, deferral counter process of 1901, hidden terminal problem and multi-hop environment are comprehensively considered. The modeling process is divided into two parts. In the local modeling part, we construct a brand-new Markov chain model to investigate the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance process of IEEE 1901 protocol under the multi-hop environment. In the coupling queueing modeling part, we employ queueing theory to analyze the packet transmission procedure between successive hops. On the basis, we derive the closed-form expressions of throughput, medium access delay, packet blocking probability, end-to-end successful transmission delay and goodput. Through extensive simulations, we verify that our theoretical model can accurately estimate the MAC performance of IEEE 1901 PLC networks in the multi-hop environment.