Estimate of cyclostationary PLC channels by a modified Self-Organizing Map

The response of power-line channels demonstrates a time-varying behaviour, synchronous to the mains, whose origin is the dependence of the impedance of some electrical devices on the mains voltage. This paper aims to present a novel decision-directed estimation method based on the self-organizing map (SOM). The proposed method reveals to be very effective in the presence of time varying channels. Numerical simulations for different realistic indoor power line networks and the comparison between different approaches reveal the potential of the proposed estimation method.