Narrowband PLC channel modeling using USRP and PSK modulations

The indoor narrowband power line communication (NB-PLC) suffers from noise impairments, which emanate from several end-user electrical devices connected across the PLC channel. These noise impairments result into burst errors, which consequently lead to data corruption. Therefore, in order to implement robust communication techniques that will thrive on the noisy PLC channel, a full knowledge and modeling of the noise that exists on the NB-PLC channel is inevitable. This paper thus reports a First-order Markov modeling of NB-PLC channel noise, based on experimental measurements. For the modeling, BPSK, DBPSK, QPSK and DQPSK modulation schemes were implemented using Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The resulting channel models are useful for improving the robustness of the above modulation schemes as well as designing forward error correction techniques for mitigating the effect of noise impairments. The results are also useful in optimizing NB-PLC system design, thereby, enhancing the accuracy and improving the overall PLC system performance.