Virtual-MIMO Cooperation Communication Based on Integrated Power Line and Wireless Communication System

Abstract

Power line communication (PLC) is a competitive technology in broad band access services and smart grids considering it widely distribution and low infrastructure built cost. This paper proposes a new PLC virtual MIMO cooperation system merged with the wireless communication to improve the reliability and capacity performance of conventional PLC system. A wireless interface is integrated in the conventional PLC modems. The nearby PLC modems constitute a V-MIMO module to share their transmitting information via the wireless link. The PLC modem in different V-MIMO module can communicate with each other through power line. The outage probability and capacity simulation results prove that new system can significantly increase the PLC system throughput and the link reliability.