Optimal Multi-Level Amplitude-Shift Keying Modulation for a Reliable Channel Magnitude Detection-Based Receive Diversity Powerline Communication System

The implementation of a coherent powerline communication (PLC) receiver increases its hardware complexity and energy consumption, which can be tackled by a non-coherent receiver. However, this reduces the reliability of the PLC systems. To meet this trade-off, a novel energy-efficient receiver structure is proposed in this study that exploits the knowledge of the channel magnitude of a receive diversity PLC system. The transmitter employs multi-level amplitude-shift keying (ASK) modulation for data transmission via the PLC channels subjected to Rayleigh multipath phenomenon and corrupted by additive Nakagami-m background noise, which would lead to a superior performance as compared to other modulation schemes owing to the channel magnitude-based proposed receiver. Utilizing the receiver structure, closed-form expression for symbol error probability (SEP) and its asymptotic expression at a high average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are derived using a characteristic function approach. Furthermore, to achieve the simultaneous design of an energy-efficient modulation scheme and a reliable PLC system, optimal ASK signaling levels are obtained with a constraint on the total available energy at the transmitter end. The analytical relation of the derived optimal multi-level ASK constellation with the traditional ASK constellation is obtained at high SNR values. The proposed channel magnitude-based receiver is found to achieve full diversity order and numerical results presented provide various insights towards the design of the energy-efficient PLC system.