A MIMO PLC random channel generator and capacity analysis

Abstract

We propose a bottom-up power line communication (PLC) channel generator that exploits multi conductor transmission line (MTL) theory combined with a random topology generation algorithm to generate statistically representative in-home multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) PLC channels. We focus on in-home PLC networks that deploy three conductors and thus provide two different circuits sharing the same return conductor. Therefore, we consider a 2×2 MIMO PLC system. We evaluate the capacity gain achieved by the MIMO configuration w.r.t. the single-input single-output (SISO) case, i.e., when only two wires are used. We further compare the simulated results with the experimental ones presented in the literature, and we show their convergence in statistical terms.