Modeling the Noise on the OFDM Power-Line Communications System

Power-line communications (PLC) have gained a lot of scientific interest over the past years. In this paper, a practical noise model is proposed that best describes the noise conditions on an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing PLC system. The noise present on a power-line system is divided in five categories which are grouped into two classes: 1) the generalized background and 2) the impulsive noise. In this paper, all of the components comprising the noise are precisely depicted on a computer simulation system. The statistical properties regarding all component parameters are taken into account and used in our model. By this way, the real conditions on a PLC channel can be portrayed in the most precise way. This model is tested on a PLC channel and its performance in terms of bit-error rate versus the E _b/N ₀ value is obtained. For reasons of completeness, we examine how two of the model´s components affect the system´s performance by altering their vital parameters. In order to accomplish this, we take various values for these parameters and we check their influence on the system. Furthermore, we apply a popular noise model, such as Middleton´s noise model and we compare the performance obtained by both noise models.