Performance analysis of an OFDM broadband power line communication (BPLC) system using multipath channel models

Power line networks are alternate options for broadband communications although there are limitations which exists within the network due to changeable behavior of character impedances, branches etc. and causes degradation of the network performance. In this paper, analysis is presented for a orthogonal FDM (OFDM) broadband power line communication (BPLC) system to evaluate the bit error rate (BER) performance results with different channel models e.g. 15-path model and 5-path model reported earlier. The results are evaluated for different number of OFDM subcarriers and different channel parameters. It is found that there are significant improvements in BER performance with increase in the number of OFDM subcarrier for a given system bandwidth of 20 MHz. Further it is noticed that 15-path model provides better estimates of channel performance compared to 5-path model.