Noise and Multipath Characteristics of Power Line Communication Channels

With the recent developments in technology, information and communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming more widespread and one of the basic building blocks of every humans life. The increasing demand in broadband communication calls for new technologies. Power line communication (PLC) is one of the potential candidates for next generation ICTs. Although communication through power lines has been investigated for a long time, PLC systems were never taken into account seriously because of its harsh communication medium. However, with the development of more robust data transmission schemes, communication over the power lines is becoming a strong alternative technology because of the existence of the infrastructure and the ubiquity of the network. In order to establish reliable communication systems operating on power line networks (PLNs), characteristics of power line channels have to be investigated very carefully. Unpredictable characteristics of PLNs seriously affect the performance of communication systems. Similar to the other communication channels, PLC environment is affected by noise, attenuation, and multipath type of channel distortions. The level of noise in PLNs is much higher than any other type of communication networks. Furthermore, the frequency dependent attenuation characteristics of power lines and multipath stemming from impedance mismatches are the other distortion factors which have to be investigated in order to establish a reliable PLC system. In this thesis, we focus on modeling of noise, frequency dependent attenuation, and multipath characteristics of power line channels within the frequency range between 30kHz and 30MHz