The effect of randomly earthed ground wires on PLC transmission-a simulation experiment

The analysis of an almost periodic lattice of cascaded line segments with individual lengths randomly distributed around a typical mean value is presented. The analysis considers an interphase balanced antisymmetric-type carrier transmission and makes use of a modal decomposition technique. Each line segment is assigned a two-port network representation whose intrinsic propagation parameters are established. The transmission matrix of the overall chain is obtained, and from it the chain propagation parameters (attenuation, velocity, surge impedances) are computed. The analysis and numerical results presented show that even slight random perturbations of line periodicity are sufficient to render unnoticeable any sharp variations in attenuation, velocity, and surge impedance