Performance Analysis of OFDM-based PLC Systems Under Impulsive Noise for Smart Grid Applications

This work presents the performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in power line communication (PLC) channels. The channel is modeled as a frequency-selective static fading channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and impulsive noise that is modeled as a Gated Bernoulli-Gaussian random variable. The performance is evaluated for bit error rate (BER), outage probability, and ergodic capacity. For mathematical tractability, the performance is derived semi-analytically based on the instantaneous signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The obtained semi-analytical results results Power line communication (PLC) is a promising technology for smart grid communication applications as it utilizes the existing electrical infrastructure for information transmission. However, PLC systems face significant performance degradation compared to wireless alternatives due to factors such as multipath fading and various types of noise, including background noise and impulsive noise. To address these issues, the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation technique is commonly employed in PLC systems to mitigate the impact of intersymbol interference (ISI) caused by multipath fading. In this study, we investigate the performance of OFDM-based PLC systems over a frequency-selective Rayleigh multipath fading channel in the presence of both background noise and impulsive noise (IN). We analyze metrics such as the bit error rate (BER), outage probability, and ergodic capacity using semi-analytical performance expressions derived in this paper. To validate our findings, we conduct Monte Carlo computer simulations.