A Reliable Power Line Carrier Employing OFDM/FH with Non-Uniform Hopping Strategy

Power line carrier (PLC) has been widely applied in the various services of energy-of-networks; however, the PLC channel exists the strong background noise and channel fading. To address these challenges, a new PLC transmission systems integrating orthogonal frequency division multiplex with frequency-hopping (FH) technique (OFDM/FH PLC), is proposed in this paper. The combination of FH and OFDM can improve the reliability of PLC system by combating the interference and channels fading. In the basis of the proposed system, a new non-uniform hopping strategy (sequence) matching with the channel quality of PLC is designed. By using the proposed hopping strategy, the multi-services in energy-of-networks can be implemented simultaneously by FH multiple access technique (FHMA). The analysis and simulation reveal that, in aid of the new hopping strategy, the proposed OFDM/FH PLC system can attain 4 dB SNR gains under the PLC channel and lead to a higher spectral efficiency, compared to the existing OFDM PLC systems. Thus, the proposed OFDM/FH PLC system employing with non-uniform hopping strategy can provide a more reliable transmission links in future energy-of-networks.