Advanced Automatic Gain Control with Noise Recognition for Power Line Applications

The utilisation of power lines for data transmission creates the need of an extensive treatment of the received signal. Due to the time variant channel properties and the complex noise scenario, the received signal is subject to large distortions compared to other communication channels. Time variable attenuation and impulsive noise are the main factors affecting and limiting the processing of the received signal. In this paper, we propose a new approach of an automatic gain control (AGC) to deal with the impact of these channel effects. The influence of typical power line distortions is avoided by the application of an extended root mean square (RMS) controller. Besides, the advanced AGC will be extended further by implementing algorithms to distinguish between transmitted signal and pure noise at the receiver in order to avoid clipping effects. Finally, we present the simulation and measurement results concerning the advanced AGC