Impact of mains zero crossing synchronization on powerline communication

This paper investigates the impact of mains zero crossing (ZC) variation on single carrier powerline (PLC) system. Because of non-idealities of alternative current (AC) signal, ZC presents a fluctuant behavior that may corrupt communication performance for such PLC systems. Authors present an overview of narrowband PLC participation in smart grid applications and a study of main AC signal perturbations. After that, the effect of early and late ZC detection is studied over a single carrier PLC using different baud rates. Simulations show that a delay of one third bit duration deteriorates bit error rate to 10-2 even in good channel conditions.