Energy-Per-Bit Performance Analysis of Relay-Assisted Power Line Communication Systems

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the energy efficiency performance for different relaying schemes over the non-Gaussian power line communication (PLC) channel. Specifically, amplify-and-forward (AF), decode-and-forward (DF), selective DF (SDF) and incremental DF (IDF) relaying systems are investigated. For a more realistic scenario, the power consumption profile of the PLC modems is assumed to consist of both dynamic and static power. For each system, we derive accurate analytical expressions for the outage probability and the minimum energy-per-bit performance. For the sake of comparison and completeness as well as to quantify the achievable gains, we also analyze the performance of a single-hop PLC system. Monte Carlo simulations are provided throughout this paper to validate the theoretical analysis. Results reveal that AF relaying over the non-Gaussian PLC channel does not always enhance the performance and that the IDF PLC system offers the best performance compared to all other schemes considered. It is also shown that increasing the channel variance, which is related to the PLC network branching, and impulsive noise probability can considerably deteriorate the system performance. Furthermore, when the end-to-end distance is relatively small, it is found that the single-hop PLC approach can perform better than AF relaying.