Efficient diversity technique for hybrid narrowband-powerline/wireless smart grid communications

Narrowband powerline communications (NB-PLC) and unlicensed wireless communications are considered as two leading communications technologies for emerging Smart Grid applications. The diversity provided by the simultaneous transmission of the same information over powerline and wireless links can be exploited to enhance the overall system reliability. In this paper, we propose an efficient technique to combine the received signals of the NB-PLC and wireless links considering the impulsive nature of the noise and interference on both links. We derive an expression for the average bit-error-rate of the proposed technique. In addition, we present simulation results that quantify the performance gains achieved by our proposed combining technique compared to conventional techniques.