Low rate and high reliable modulation schemes for in-vehicle power line communications

In-vehicle signal transmission requires dedicated communication cables such as twisted metal wires and optical fiber cables, which increase the weight and volume of wiring harnesses in vehicles. Low rate in-vehicle power line communication (PLC) systems are investigated to communicate the control data between electronic control units (ECUs) via in-vehicle power lines. To design low rate in-vehicle PLC systems, the communication channels are analyzed. It is shown that the channels are mainly characterized by frequency selective attenuation and narrowband impulsive noise. In this paper, a model of impulsive noise is presented for in-vehicle PLC and effects of carrier frequency selection and analog limiter on narrowband impulsive noise channels are analyzed in binary phase shift keying (BPSK), differential BPSK (DBPSK), and on-off keying (OOK). The simulation results show that DBPSK and differential detection with hard limiter achieve high reliable and cost-effective communications for low rate in-vehicle PLC systems.