Performance Analysis of an Opportunistic Relaying Power Line Communication Systems

Powerline communication (PLC) is an attractive approach to providing information transfer services for future smart grids. However, due to high attenuation and interference, it is a great challenge to achieve reliable transmissions over PLC channels. In this letter, we propose an opportunistic decode-and-forward-based multiple-relaying (ODFR) scheme to enhance the performance of PLC networks, where the optimal relay is selected dynamically for data forwarding. Specifically, we first formulate the cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of the received signal-to-noise ratio by exploiting statistical properties of the PLC channels. Then, drawing upon this derived CDF, we further develop the closed-form expressions of outage probability and approximate capacity for the proposed ODFR scheme. Simulations validate the consistency of our analytical results with Monte Carlo simulations.