PRIME Performance in power line communication channel

Abstract

New communication schemes are being developed to be used for Automatic Metering Reading (AMR). For this AMR system, one of the most popular approach is using power lines as a communication medium to inject a narrow band spectrum. PRIME is a new Physical and Data Link layers specification for powerline communication in the last mile released in the last two years. The main problem that this technology has to deal with is the severe attenuation that signals suffer due to reflections and fadings. Another important handicap is the time varying response of the channel produced by impulsive noise. This paper focuses on PRIME’s physical specification and describes its details and procedures to overcome the previously mentioned problems. A model, developed in Matlab, implements and integrates the Forward Error Corrections (FEC) and modulation techniques described in the standard. Together with the transmitter and receiver, a channel model was created following previous studies found in the literature. The study shows the performance of PRIME’ solution on the severe conditions of a PLC channel.