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MAC Performance Evaluation in Low Voltage PLC Networks

Authors:
Mehdi Korki
Hai Le Vu
Chuan Heng Foh
Xiao Lu
Nasser Hosseinzadeh

Keywords: Low voltage power line communication; medium access control protocol; performance evaluation; orthogonal frequency division multiplexing

Abstract:
Power line communication (PLC) system refers to the use of power distribution networks for communication purposes. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the low voltage (LV) power lines for smart grid applications involving data transfer in a specific narrow, low frequency band. We propose an analytical approach to obtain the line’s transfer function and conduct simulation to determine the performance of the LV PLC system in terms of bit error rate. We then evaluate the performance of the medium access control protocol (MAC) for the LV PLC network taking into account its physical characteristic and performance limitation. We show by simulation that packet loss in this network can be significant even with a light traffic condition due to the noisy channel, and the goodput declines sharply once the individual transmission rate is high enough to congest the network. We also show that the channel errors can be reduced by adjusting the MAC parameters to allow the retransmissions recouping losses.

Pages: 135 to 140

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: May 22, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-412X

ISBN: 978-1-61208-136-6

Location: Venice/Mestre, Italy

Dates: from May 22, 2011 to May 27, 2011