An MIMO Random Channel Generator for Indoor Power-Line Communication

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology has already been used in power-line communication (PLC). An accurate description of MIMO channels for PLC network topologies is of great interest and importance in the development and testing of digital communication algorithms. However, the considerable variability of PLC networks makes this task quite difficult. In this regard, a random channel generator for a single-input single-output (SISO) configuration has been presented in the literature. The procedure was applied to a set of measured channels that were interestingly divided into nine classes. In this paper, an MIMO random channel generator based on the aforementioned SISO configuration is proposed. An MIMO channel is considered as the superposition of correlated SISO channels so we attempt to describe an MIMO channel using the nine classes obtained with the SISO configuration. An additional parameter, related to the correlation factor, had to be taken into account. It is shown that when this parameter is obtained from probabilistic distribution with properly chosen standard deviations for each of the nine classes, the European MIMO PLC field measurements can be accurately reproduced by the random channel generator.