BER Analysis of a Multi-Hop Decode and Forward PLC System Affected by Rayleigh Fading and Middleton Class A Channel Noise

In this paper, an analytical model is developed for evaluating the performance of a multi-hop decode and forward (DF) single input single output(SISO) power line communiction(PLC) system in terms of BER. The expression for conditional BER considering the Middleton class A (MCA) noise model is developed. The probability density function (PDF) of the continuously varying signal to noise ratio (SNR) is also derived to find out the average BER in the presence of Rayleigh fading. The overall BER performance of the N-hop single input single output PLC (SISO-PLC) equipped with the decode and forward technique is evaluated for various SNR. The effect of different parameters of the MCA noise model is observed. In addition, the effect of increasing the number of hops and the effect of the different end to end distances are also evaluated. It is found that for a given end to end link distance, the performance in terms of BER gets better when the hop number is increased with decode and forward technique.