A Performance Comparison between OFDM and FBMC in PLC Applications

Power Line Communication (PLC) can be a viable alternative for broadband data transmission, mainly by utilizing the infrastructure of the existing electrical networks, reducing costs in its implementation. However, the power grid is a hostile medium for data transmission, presenting impedance mismatches, noise interference and multipath signal propagation, characterizing the PLC channel model. With the objective of obtaining a better spectral efficiency and increasing the data transmission rate in PLC networks, this work studied the performance of the Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC) submitted to the PLC channel model, comparing the results with the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which is the modulation used in the physical layer of the IEEE 1901 standard. The results shows that the FBMC is more robust to the PLC channel model, providing an increase in the data transmission rate of up to 25% in relation to OFDM and can be implemented in the physical layer of the IEEE 1901 standard.