PLC System Performance With AF Relaying

• Published in: IEEE transactions on communications 2015-06, Vol.63 (6), p.2337-2345
• Main Authors: Dubey, Ankit, Mallik, Ranjan K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Amplification; Amplify-and-forward (AF); Attenuation; Bernoulli-Gaussian process; binary phase-shift keying (BPSK); Bit error rate; bit error rate (BER); Channel capacity; channel state information (CSI); Codes; Data transfer (computers); Exact solutions; Fading; full-duplex; impulsive noise; log-normal fading; multi-hop; Noise; Noise measurement; Personal computers; power line communication (PLC); Programmable logic controllers; Random variables; Relays; Repeaters
• ISSN: 0090-6778; 1558-0857
• DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2015.2427171

The use of repeaters (relays) has recently been introduced in power line communication (PLC) systems for long-distance data transfer and thus, it becomes important to analyze the performance of relay based PLC systems. A simplified system model with distance dependent signal attenuation and additive white Gaussian noise may not cover all the factors affecting the data transfer, such as variation in amplitude (fading) and occurrence of impulsive noise. Hence, a more realistic system model with log-normal fading, distance dependent signal attenuation, and a Bernoulli-Gaussian impulsive noise is considered in this paper to study the end-to-end average bit error rate (BER) and the end-to-end average channel capacity of a PLC system equipped with amplify-and-forward (AF) relays. Approximate closed-form expressions of the end-to-end average BER for binary phase-shift keying and the average channel capacity for high signal-to-noise ratio are obtained. The performance of the PLC system with AF relays is found to be superior compared to that of a direct transmission PLC system for fixed transmission power.