Performance Evaluation Of Adaptive Modulation Schemes Based On Bit Error Rate In Power Line Communication Channels

Abstract

PLC is crucial to smart grid infrastructure and industrial communication since it uses pre-installed electrical connections to send data.  However, impulsive noise, severe attenuation, multipath fading, and other harsh channel conditions make it difficult for PLC systems to function effectively, and popular simulation models do not adequately address these problems. The research exhibits broad performance analysis of BER with different modulation schemes, the FEC to be used, condition of multipath channels, block sizes, and filtering methods. The results demonstrate that modulations of higher order (64-QAM) show a modicum better stability in BER than QPSK and 16-QAM in majority of conditions tried, particularly when associated with FEC, and which has marginal and significant consistent improvements. Multipath channel simulation (Scenarios 3 and 6) proves the notion that BER increases with the number of paths in the channel and that in 7-path configurations, the most degradation occurs, as anticipated by theory. Nevertheless, our findings quantify this degradation to a better measure than what was provided earlier in the literature, which can be of great value when it comes to the design of PLC systems in practice. Fluctuations in the size of blocks (Scenario 4) and filtering (Scenario 5) cause little but measurable effects and suggest that though such parameters can be used to optimize performance, channel conditions are the most critical factor. In comparison with the prior works, the strength of our work is the single assessing framework, which considers all the critical parameters of PLC in a controlled fashion, providing meaningful insights in improving, in practice, the BER and closing the gap between knowledge and practice.