Time frequency analysis of noise generated by electrical loads in PLC

This keynote discusses the behavior of noise in indoor power line communications (PLC) channels. Some ideas to improve system performance based on the knowledge of PLC noise are also introduced. The power-line noise at an outlet is the sum of noise waveforms produced and emitted to the lines from the appliances connected to the power-line network. In the design and the analysis of wireless communication systems, stationary additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is often assumed. In PLC systems, however, the statistical behavior of the man-made noise is quite different from that of the stationary AWGN. The fact that the noise in power-lines is not AWGN is often believed to be a cause of low quality of communications. However, Gaussian is the distribution of the largest entropy, and communications under non-Gaussian noise may achieve better performance if the system is designed to adapt the noise statistics. In other words, PLC systems retain large potential for performance improvement if the behavior of the noise is clarified and taken into account in the system design. For narrow-band indoor PLC, we have a mathematically tractable and accurate model based on experimental measurements. In this model, the noise is expressed as a Gaussian process whose instantaneous variance is a periodic time function. With this assumption and representation, the cyclostationary features of power-line noise can be described in close form formula with a small set of parameters. In wide-band indoor PLC, we have made measurements with high speed sampling (50MHz) with long observation duration (10.4s).

Although Power Line Communication (PLC) is not a new technology, its use to support data transmission over low voltage (LV) distribution networks is still the focus of ongoing research. This thesis focuses on the channel modelling and performance evaluation of narrowband (NB) PLC system. First, the channel modelling approaches of PLC are studied. Then, the proposed PLC channel modelling method based on the bottom-up approach for LV narrowband PLC in a frequency band between 9 kHz and 490 kHz is presented. This proposed model employs the transmission and scattering matrix methods to calculate the transfer function of a typical LV PLC network which comprises two common cable types (copper cables and aluminium conductor steel reinforced). Unlike the top-down approaches, this model is scalable as the network complexity increases and can better describe the network behaviour as a function of physical parameters.In addition, the noise characteristics and popular noise reduction techniques of PLC are studied. The major impairment to the PLC is the impulsive noise which is mainly generated by the switching transient in the network. Hence, a new technique is proposed to mitigate the impact of impulsive noise on data transmission over power lines. This proposed technique is an optimal Clipping/Blanking nonlinearity technique which is based on the minimum bit error rate (BER) search. Results obtained from the simulation of this technique demonstrate that performance has been enhanced in the NB-PLC system. The performance of the narrowband PLC system is also evaluated in both physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layers. Since Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a suitable modulation scheme for hostile environment of the power line, it is used to evaluate the PHY layer performance. As a result of the PHY layer performance analyses, it is found that the BER performance between neighbouring points in the typical LV PLC network is reasonable, but communication beyond one hop have to rely on upper layer protocols. In the MAC layer performance evaluation of the PLC system, the widely known random access MAC protocol that uses the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) will be utilised. The MAC performance evaluation of the PLC system demonstrates a significant packet loss in LV PLC network even with a light traffic condition due to the noisy channel. Furthermore, the goodput declines abruptly once the individual transmission rate is high enough to block the network. In addition, the simulation results show that the channel errors can be reduced by adjusting the MAC parameters to allow the re-transmissions mechanisms to recoup the lost packets.

Advanced communication technologies has allowed the power-line communication (PLC) channel to be a transmission medium that enables the transferring of high-speed digital data over the classical indoor electrical wires. The development of PLC systems for Internet, voice, and data services requires measurement-based models of the transfer characteristics of the power-line network suitable for performance analysis by simulation. In this paper, a statistical-based and deterministic PLC channel frequency model was proposed. This model has the advantage of using only one parameter: the channel class. Related software is also developed. In this paper, this model is further improved to represent the measured impulse responses, and related software is developed. First, a PLC channel classification is realized, and an average magnitude and phase channel model by class is proposed. Second, the multipath behaviour of the PLC channel is introduced: a statistical-based channel magnitude generator is built, and a refined phase model is suggested. Finally, the related software is briefly described.

Power line communication (PLC) uses the highly developed infrastructure of the electrical energy distribution network for data transmission. Measurements are showing that a broadband use of PLC channels is possible. So, PLC is of interest to future broadband communication systems. Such systems will be heterogeneous in several respects, for example relative to the used transmission channel but also relative to the complexity of the participant nodes. Wittneben and Kuhn (see block VTC 2002 - Spring) presented a new class of space-time block codes for radio channels. These codes meet the requirements of future communication systems. They are highly flexible and can be adapted to the particular requests of the transmission. In this paper a PLC application of these codes is investigated. They are used as a basis for a scalable and efficient PLC channel coding scheme. This shows that this class of codes can be used as a generic coding scheme for heterogeneous networks. Alternatively, the PLC application can be considered as an example of the usage of the codes on a frequency selective channel with coloured noise. The applied linear block code optimally uses the diversity of the frequency selective channels in combination with OFDM. This leads to significant gains in performance in case of very frequency selective channels; for barely frequency selective channels or for an AWGN channel the performance is slightly better or not affected respectively. These performance results are presented for measured PLC channels.

Power line communication (PLC) utilizes power lines for the purpose of electronic data transmission. The performance of a PLC system is significantly affected by the additive and multiplicative power line noises; the additive noises are of two types, namely background noise and impulsive noise. Whereas, the multiplicative PLC noise leads to fading in the received signal strength. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of a PLC system over log-normal fading channel under Nakagami-m distributed additive background noise assuming binary phase shift keying modulation scheme. The analysis involving log-normal fading is very complicated. Hence we use a novel gamma approximation to log-normal distribution for our analysis. We evaluate the probability density function of the decision variable. A closed-form expression of the analytical average bit error rate of the considered system is derived. We also compute the diversity order of the considered PLC system. The validity of the derived analytical expressions is closely verified by the simulation results.

Power Line Communication (PLC) channel is a very challenging environment, this is due to the fact that severe impairments adhering this medium. A more realistic and accurate noise model based symmetric alpha-stable distribution (SαS) is considered in this paper to better fit the properties of real noise inherent in power grid system. In this paper we study the impact of the degree of impulsiveness based SαS model on the performance of MIMO over PLC channel. Results show the improvement reached in PLC by using MIMO-OFDM, and reveal the effectiveness of considering a more realistic noise model.

The characteristics of the power-line communication (PLC) channel are difficult to model due to the heterogeneity of the networks and the lack of common wiring practices. To obtain the full variability of the PLC channel, random channel generators are of great importance for the design and testing of communication algorithms. In this respect, we propose a random channel generator that is based on the top-down approach. Basically, we describe the multipath propagation and the coupling effects with an analytical model. We introduce the variability into a restricted set of parameters and, finally, we fit the model to a set of measured channels. The proposed model enables a closed-form description of both the mean path-loss profile and the statistical correlation function of the channel frequency response. As an example of application, we apply the procedure to a set of in-home measured channels in the band 2-100 MHz whose statistics are available in the literature. The measured channels are divided into nine classes according to their channel capacity. We provide the parameters for the random generation of channels for all nine classes, and we show that the results are consistent with the experimental ones. Finally, we merge the classes to capture the entire heterogeneity of in-home PLC channels. In detail, we introduce the class occurrence probability, and we present a random channel generator that targets the ensemble of all nine classes. The statistics of the composite set of channels are also studied, and they are compared to the results of experimental measurement campaigns in the literature.

It has been shown that power line communication (PLC) in the high frequency (HF) band is a feasible data transmission method for a future smart grid concept — a low-voltage direct current (LVDC) distribution system. Furthermore, PLC is proposed as a basis of the data network architecture in the LVDC system. In the analysis of the communication channel characteristics and the design of the communication system, channel modeling plays an essential role. A PLC channel model in the LVDC system is presented and analyzed in this paper. The channel model is implemented with a circuit simulator, which provides several advantages for the modeling; for instance, channel characteristics can be analyzed and modeled both in the time and frequency domain. In this paper, the PLC channel gain (including signal attenuation in the power cable) in the LVDC system is modeled in the frequency domain. The channel model is verified by and compared with measurements carried out in the PLC channel in an LVDC laboratory system.

We investigate the use of Low Rank Parity Check Codes (LRPC), originally designed for cryptography applications in the context of Power Line Communication (PLC). Particularly we propose a new code design and an efficient probabilistic decoding algorithm. The main idea of decoding LRPC codes is based on calculations of vector spaces over a finite field F q . This family of codes can be seen as the equivalent of classical LDPC codes for the rank metric. We compare the performance of this code against the Reed-Solomon Code (RS) through a PLC channel. We show by simulation that the proposed system outperforms the traditional scheme where the PLC channel is subjected to both impulsive noise and narrowband interference.

Multicarrier schemes, like OFDM, provide several advantages for channel estimation and equalization in many communication systems. Channel estimators, like LMMSE (linear minimum mean-square error) have proven to be very effective, however, they are not feasible to be implemented in real time due to its computational requirements. This work proposes a Power Line Communication (PLC) channel estimator based on the mathematical properties of Complementary Sequences (CS). The proposal is implemented on a BPSK-OFDM scheme, and all the signal processing is made on the frequency domain. Simulations were performed by using two characteristic PLC channels with Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) as well as impulse noises. Results, reported as Mean Square Error (MSE) and Bit Error-rate (BER) shows that the proposal provide best results than least squares (LS) method and a similar performance than the observed in LMMSE, mainly under impulse noises, with the main advantage of using least computational resources.

Power Line Communications (PLC) is regarded as the promising home networking technology for smart grid application since the PLC technology enables data transmission via the existing power line. The cooperation between PLC and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) will be an effective hybrid solution for Home Area Networks (HANs). In this paper, we consider that Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) packets are transmitting in heterogenous communications network based on PLC and WLAN. The existing TCP congestion control has low effectiveness due to the error-prone power line channel. Therefore, we propose an adaptive rate control to improve TCP performance in the hybrid PLC/WLAN HANs. We exploit the communications mechanism of WLAN to improve the PLC link utilization. The methodology of Heuristic Dynamic Programming (HDP) is employed to obtain the optimal rate policy. The bottleneck link capacity is estimated by neural network training. The sending rate is adapted according to the long-term quality of service (QoS) of applications. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed rate control effectively filters out the negative impact from the instantaneous impulse noise in PLC channel and outperforms the existing TCP.

Direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) and M-ary frequency shift keying (MFSK) are two viable modulation schemes for broadband power line communication (PLC) channels, for multi-carrier and single carrier cases respectively. In this paper, we study the bit error rate (BER) performance of a synchronous DS-CDMA system and an MFSK system employing coherent detection for a PLC channel. The background noise present in PLC channel is assumed to follow Nakagami-m distribution as suggested by earlier works. Thereafter a comparison is drawn between the two modulation schemes. In order to draw the comparison at an equal level, we analyse the BER performances of the two systems having the same degree of transmitter/ receiver complexity along with the criteria of same bandwidth occupation, same transmission power as well as the same PLC channel characteristics. The study provides an insight as to how a small change in the parameter of a random variable (RV) describing the background power line noise has a marked influence on the BER performances of the two modulation schemes mentioned above. Also from the simulation results obtained it is quite evident that for a single user case, the MFSK system outperforms the DS-CDMA system at similar data rates.

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.

In this paper, we present a capacity analysis for broadband power line communication (PLC) channels, impaired by the Bernoulli–Gaussian impulsive noise, exploiting both orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single‐carrier frequency‐domain equalisation (SC‐FDE) techniques. First, we investigate point‐to‐point communications and formulate the continuous signal model for OFDM and SC‐FDE techniques in PLC environments and find the tight bounds derived for differential entropy of the non‐Gaussian noise samples. Capacity bounds and a certain capacity result for point‐to‐point PLC systems are also computed. Then, we analyse the capacity in the presence of a relay terminal between the transmitter and the receiver. In this part, we assume correlated noises between the relay and the receiver and derive general upper bound and achievable rate using partial decode‐and‐forward coding strategy for PLC channels. We also show that the obtained bounds coincide in degraded and reversely degraded special cases. Finally, using two statistical divergences, we compare the distances of the Bernoulli–Gaussian and Middleton class A noise models from the normal distribution of their background part and show that the Middleton class A noise is nearer to the Gaussian background noise than the Bernoulli–Gaussian. Therefore, the capacity curve for Middleton class A noise is between the capacity for the Gaussian background noise and the obtained capacity for the Bernoulli–Gaussian model. The obtained capacity theorems are also illustrated numerically. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Power line communications (PLC) and visible light communications (VLC) are two emerging communication technologies which have several similarities. Among them, the advantage related to cost effectiveness is considered as strong research motivation. These two technologies are also characterized by the fact that each one of them barely form a complete communication system without the need of other supporting technologies. In this paper, based on the positive aspect of VLC technology, we exploit the Hermitian symmetry to design an hybrid system combining PLC and VLC technologies using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). A DC biased optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM), employed in VLC, is investigated when combined with PSK-OFDM (used in PLC). In the hybrid PLC-VLC system proposed in this paper, we exploit the inherent clipping feature of DCO-OFDM to combat impulsive noise found in the PLC channel, where the optimal combination of the DC bias level for optical communication, DC and impulse noise clipping threshold, T <inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">c</inf> are investigated through simulations. We also exploit the fact that both DCO-OFDM and PSK-OFDM employ the FFT, to simplify the system.