Multi-relay selection scheme for cooperative QAM-FBMC based broadband PLC systems

Abstract

Selecting the appropriate modulation technique is a major concern in designing reliable broadband power line communication (BPLC) systems. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) was gaining more attention as a multi-carrier modulation (MCM) technique for cooperative BPLC. Nevertheless, OFDM has some drawbacks that degrade the BPLC performance. Here, the author first proposes a new Quadrature Amplitude Modulation-Filter-Bank Multicarrier (QAM-FBMC) transceiver to improve the bit error rate (BER) performance and to achieve higher throughput in BPLC-based systems. Furthermore, an opportunistic multi-parameter-based multi-relay selection (OMP-MRS) scheme is proposed to future improve the performance of cooperative BPLC-based systems. In this regard, the analytical expressions for outage probability and system throughput are derived and validated with Monte Carlo simulations. The optimal parameters that maximise the BPLC performance are obtained via exhaustive search. The proposed scheme harvesting the high amount of noise exists in PLC, especially impulsive noise to further improve the energy efficiency. Numerical and simulation results validate the consistency of the analytical model and its derivations. Results reveal that the proposed OMP-MRS scheme outperforms the existing multi-relay selection schemes presented in literature with an acceptable computational complexity.