Analysis of Smart Grid Wide Area Network for Three Hop Mixed PLC/RF/FSO Channel

Abstract

A three-hop long range communication system with mixed fading for smart grid (SG) wide area network (WAN) is proposed. The three hops proposed here are power line communication (PLC), radio frequency (RF) and free space optical (FSO) in cascade. The smart meter (SM) transfers the data to the access point (AP) through a PLC link. The AP is acting as a decode-and-forward (DF) relay. It retransmits the data to data aggregator unit (DAU) through RF link. The DAU also acts as a DF relay and retransmits the information to meter data management system (MDMS) through FSO link. The PLC, RF, and FSO links are distributed with Log-Normal, Nakagami-m, and Gamma-Gamma distribution, respectively. The modulation scheme considered here is binary phase shift keying (BPSK). A closed form expression for average bit error probability (ABEP) is obtained. Numerical and Monte-Carlo simulation results demonstrate the effect of impulsive noise scenario in the PLC channel, fading severity in Nakagami-m channel, and different FSO parameters in SG communication system.