Bit Error Rate Performance in Power Line Communication Channels with Impulsive Noise

Abstract

Power Line Communication (PLC) has the potential to become the preferred technique for providing broadband to homes and offices with advantage of eliminating the need for new wiring infrastructure and reducing the cost. However, power line grids present a hostile channel for data communication, since the fundamental purpose for power line channel was only the transmission of electric power at 50/60 Hz frequencies. The performance of PLC degrades due to the presence of different types of noise interferences generated by electrical appliances. This paper investigates the bit-error rate (BER) performance of 16-QAM constellation with orthogonal frequency multiplexing modulation (OFDM) in presence of impulsive noise and background noise over a multipath PLC channel. A Middleton class A noise is modelled as an impulsive noise whereas the background noise is modelled as an Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). Mat lab model is developed to access the PLC channel's behavior in presence of these two noises. The effect of varying the Middleton class A model's parameters on the PLC channel's performance is also investigated. It is observed that BER for the impulsive noise is higher than the background noise. The BER further deteriorates on increasing the level of the impulsive noise, even while being injected into the PLC channel at a lower rate. Investigations would assist applying methods to mitigate and reduce the effect of impulsive noise over PLC systems for higher constellations with a view to increase the data rates.