Assessment of BER Performance of a Power Line Communication System in the Presence of Transformer and Performance Improvement Using Diversity Reception

Abstract

When a transformer is present in a power line communication (PLC) system and a high-frequency signal passes through it, the low-voltage distribution lines and customers’ load characteristics will be changed due to high-frequency effects. When a transformer is present, the propagation of high-frequency signals in a PLC channel, the transmitted signals become a very strong function of frequency. In this paper, an analytical attempt is made to measure the attenuation of high-frequency signals across transformers in a PLC system considering the said effects. The BER performance analysis is carried out for a PLC system having a transformer on-load using the transfer function of the channel without and with impulsive noise and applying diversity reception. The performance results are evaluated for different number of orthogonal carriers and for several system bandwidths with and without impulsive noise and different number of diversity branches in the receiver. The results show that there is a significant improvement in system performance with the increase in the number of OFDM subcarriers; also, there is further improvement in receiver sensitivity with the increase in the amount of receiving antennas.