Ankit Dubey

Performance of a PLC system in impulsive noise with selection combining

This paper proposes a selection combining (SC) scheme for a power line communication (PLC) system with binary phase-shift keying. The main purpose is to utilize multiple of independent and non-interfering channels to send an information-bearing signal and to use SC at the receiver end to improve the reliability of the PLC system. The fading coefficient of each PLC channel is modeled by a log-normal distribution, and to include the effects of both background noise and impulsive noise, the additive noise samples are taken from a Bernoulli-Gaussian process. We obtain a closed-form approximation of the bit error rate and an expression for the outage probability of the proposed scheme. The merit of the L-channel PLC system with SC when compared with a single channel PLC system over different fading and impulsive noise scenarios is demonstrated through numerical results.

PLC System Performance With AF Relaying

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.

Modeling and performance analysis of a PLC system in presence of impulsive noise

In this paper, a power system having different loads which are switched at different instants is considered. We consider scenarios when the loads in a power system change at very fast rate. This switching causes impulsive noise in the associated power line communication (PLC) channel which limits the average bit error rate (BER) performance. The paper aims to analyze the performance of a PLC system for varying load switching rates. The PLC system under consideration employs direct sequence spread spectrum coding with amplitude shift-keying (ASK) modulation. An approximate closed form expression for the average BER is derived. A composite and a physical layer system model is developed. The physical layer model analysis shows that the average BER performance improves with increasing transmitted power and decreasing distance between the transmitter and the receiver. Similarly, the composite model analysis shows that the performance improves with decreasing load switching rates.

Voltage control of a DC microgrid with double-input converter in a multi-PV scenario using PLC

This paper explores the area of double-input single-output DC-DC converters to develop a photovoltaic (PV) source based DC microgrid which is incorporated with maximum power point tracking control technique. The converter used is a fifth-order converter utilizing boost plus single ended primary inductor converter topology which draws power from the two PV sources simultaneously and supplies upstream with reduced ripple current. A control strategy is developed for load voltage regulation by operating the PV in derating mode. The PV sources are controlled to remove any power mismatch, thus maintaining constant voltage at the load end. The voltage is measured at the load end and the error signal is sent to the controller through power line communication (PLC). Results obtained in MATLAB/ Simulink show that the proposed scheme helps in regulating the load voltage by derating the PV sources. This also demonstrates the successful application of the PLC technique in a DC system.

Effect of channel correlation on multi-hop data transmission over power lines with decode-and-forward relays

The authors presents a study of the effect of correlation among the multi-hop path gains on the average channel capacity and the outage performance of a power line communication system equipped with decode-and-forward relays. The path gain of each hop follows a log-normal distribution and the joint density is modelled by a multivariate log-normal distribution with exponential correlation. A distance dependent signal attenuation factor is added to the channel model to incorporate the effect of physical distance between the nodes. Furthermore, a Gaussian mixture (Bernoulli-Gaussian) noise is included in the system model to analyse the effect of impulsive noise together with thermal noise. Approximate closed-form expressions for the end-to-end average channel capacity and the outage probability are derived. Numerical results showing the impact of the amount of correlation, the number of hops, the impulsive noise power, and the spread of the average power of the path gains on the performance are presented. The results show that for a fixed transmit power and end-to-end distance between source and destination, the performance improves with increasing number of hops; however, the amount of improvement reduces with increasing channel correlation.