Multi user MIMO-OFDM-based power line communication structure with hardware impairments and crosstalk

Broadband power line communication (BPLC) provides high speed data services without requiring the installation of new infrastructure. Multiple-input-multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) technology can significantly improve the BPLC performance. In this study a new multi-user (MU) MIMO-OFDM structure for BPLC is proposed. The effects of physical hardware impairments on the performance of this structure are also presented. Unlike to MIMO-BPLC with ideal hardware, the hardware impairments cause a capacity limit at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Another technical challenge in designing MIMO BPLC network is the crosstalk between MIMO PLC ports which has non-negligible effect on network capacity. In order to reduce the effects of crosstalk, the authors propose a new scheme based on applying Pre-coding at the transmitter before applying the singular value decomposition (SVD) on the MIMO channel. Due to the nature of the power-line channel, the different users have different channel conditions. Thus this study also addresses the application of an efficient resource allocation algorithm to improve the overall performance of the proposed BPLC structure. The obtained results indicate that by applying the proposed resource allocation algorithm along with the Maximum Ratio Combining Pre-coding (Pre-MRC), the proposed structure becomes insensitive to crosstalk and has significant channel capacity compared to conventional PLC networks.