Modeling the Noise on the OFDM Power-Line Communications System

Abstract

Power-line communications (PLC) have gained a lot of scientific interest over the past years. In this paper, a practical noise model is proposed that best describes the noise conditions on an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing PLC system. The noise present on a power-line system is divided in five categories which are grouped into two classes: 1) the generalized background and 2) the impulsive noise. In this paper, all of the components comprising the noise are precisely depicted on a computer simulation system. The statistical properties regarding all component parameters are taken into account and used in our model. By this way, the real conditions on a PLC channel can be portrayed in the most precise way. This model is tested on a PLC channel and its performance in terms of bit-error rate versus the <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">E</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">b</sub> / <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">N</i> <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">0</sub> value is obtained. For reasons of completeness, we examine how two of the model's components affect the system's performance by altering their vital parameters. In order to accomplish this, we take various values for these parameters and we check their influence on the system. Furthermore, we apply a popular noise model, such as Middleton's noise model and we compare the performance obtained by both noise models.