Radio frequency energy transfer (RET) technology has been introduced as a promising energy harvesting (EH) method to supply power in both wireless communication (WLC) and power-line communication (PLC) systems. However, current RET modified MAC (medium access control) protocols have been proposed only for WLC systems. Due to the difference in the MAC standard between WLC and PLC systems, these protocols are not suitable for PLC systems. Therefore, how to utilize RET technology to modify the MAC protocol of PLC systems (i.e., IEEE 1901), which can use the radio frequency signal to provide the transmission power and the PLC medium to finish the data transmission, i.e., realizing the ‘cooperative communication’ remains a challenge. To resolve this problem, we propose a RET modified MAC protocol for PLC systems (RET-PLC MAC). Firstly, we improve the standard PLC frame sequence by adding consultation and confirmation frames, so that the station can obtain suitable harvested energy, once it occupied the PLC medium, and the PLC system can be operated in an on-demand and self-sustainable manner. On this basis, we present the working principle of RET-PLC MAC. Then, we establish an analytical model to allow mathematical verification of RET-PLC MAC. A 2-dimension discrete Markov chain model is employed to derive the numerical analysis results of RET-PLC MAC. The impacts of buffer size, traffic rate, deferral counter process of 1901, heterogeneous environment and quality of information (QoI) are comprehensively considered in the modeling process. Moreover, we deduce the optimal results of system throughput and expected QoI. Through extensive simulations, we show the performance of RET-PLC MAC under different system parameters, and verify the corresponding analytical model. Our work provides insights into realizing cooperative communication at PLC's MAC layer.

In this paper, we propose an enhanced selected mapping (e-SLM) technique to improve the performance of OFDM-PLC systems under impulsive noise. At the transmitter, the best transmit sequence is selected from among possible candidates so as to minimize the weighted sum of transmit signal peak power and the estimated receive one, where the received signal peak power is estimated at the transmitter using channel state information (CSI). At the receiver, a nonlinear blanking is applied to hold the impulsive noise under a given threshold, where impulsive noise detection accuracy is improved by the proposed e-SLM. We evaluate the probability of false alarms raised by impulsive noise detection and bit error rate (BER) of OFDM-PLC system using the proposed e-SLM. The results show the effectiveness of the proposed method in OFDM-PLC system compared with the conventional blanking technique.

This paper proposes a novel wavelet de-noising scheme regarding the existing burst noises that consist of background and impulsive noises in power-line communications. The proposed de-noising scheme employs multi-level threshold functions to efficiently and adaptively reduce the given burst noises. The experiment results show that the proposed de-noising scheme significantly outperformed the conventional schemes.

Hybrid vehicles (HVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) have become widespread. These vehicles incorporate a large number of electronic devices, which requires the use of a high-voltage (200 V) battery. Power electronics devices driven by the 200 V battery is expected to increase in the future. As such, we herein propose a power line communication (PLC) method that uses a high-voltage power line. In the present paper, we first clarify the transmission channel through modeling of an equivalent circuit and channel measurement. We then conduct noise measurements and determine the noise characteristics of the proposed PLC. Finally, we evaluate the bit error rate performance through computer simulations based on the measured transmission channel and noise.

In this letter, we propose an improved timing offset estimation scheme without making use of pilot symbols in the HomePlug Green PHY (HomePlug GP) standard. In contrast to the conventional decision-directed timing estimation scheme, the proposed scheme exploits the inherent repetition information of the HomePlug GP signals, thus not only removing the need for the estimated data or pilot symbols but also improving the timing estimation performance.

Chip-to-chip serial data communication is superposed on power supply over common Vdd/Vss connections through chip, package, and board traces. A power line transceiver demonstrates half duplex spiking communication at more than 100 Mbps. A pair of transceivers consumes 1.35 mA from 3.3 V, at 130 Mbps. On-chip power line LC low pass filter attenuates pseudo-differential communication spikes by 30 dB, purifying power supply current for internal circuits. Bi-directional spiking communication was successfully examined in a 90-nm CMOS prototype setup of on-chip waveform capturing. A micro controller forwards clock pulses to and receives data streams from a comparator based waveform capturer formed on a different chip, through a single pair of power and ground traces. The bit error rate is small enough not to degrade waveform acquisition capability, maintaining the spurious free dynamic range of higher than 50 dB.

As a method to realize a high-speed communication in the home network, the power-line communication (PLC) technique is known. A problem of PLC is that leakage radiation interferes with existing systems. When OFDM is used in a PLC system, the leakage radiation is not sufficiently reduced, even if the subcarriers corresponding to the frequency-band of the existing system are never used, because the signal is not strictly band-limited. To solve this problem, each subcarrier must be band-limited. In this paper, we apply the OQAM based multi-carrier transmission (OQAM-MCT) to a high-speed PLC system, where each subcarrier is individually band-limited. We also propose a pilot-symbol sequence suitable for frequency offset estimation, symbol-timing detection and channel estimation in the OQAM-MCT system. In this method, the pilot signal-sequence consists of a repeated series of the same data symbol. With this method, the pilot sequence approximately becomes equivalent to OFDM sequence and therefore existing pilot-assisted methods for OFDM are also applicable to OQAM-MCT system. Computer simulation results show that the OQAM-MCT system achieves both good transmission rate performance and low out-of-band radiation in PLC channels. It is also shown that the proposed pilot-sequence improves frequency offset estimation, symbol-timing detection and channel estimation performance as compared with the case of using pseudo-noise sequence.

Power-line communication (PLC) technique is one method to realize high-speed communications in a home network. In PLC channels, the transmission signal quality is degraded by colored non-Gaussian noise as well as frequency-selectivity of the channels. In this paper, we describe our investigation of the performance of a OQAM-MCT system in which a noise canceller is used jointly with a time-domain per-subcarrier adaptive equalizer. Furthermore, we propose a noise cancellation method designed for the OQAM-MCT system. The performance of the OQAM-MCT system is evaluated in PLC channels with measured impulse responses in the presence of measured noise. Computer simulation results show that the bit rate of the OQAM-MCT system is improved using both an adaptive equalizer and noise canceller, and that the OQAM-MCT system achieves better performance than an OFDM system with an insufficient length of the guard interval.

This paper overviews the high-speed power-line communication (PLC) technology, and the related standardization and regulatory activities are described. PLC modems of 200 Mbps class become a practical use stage in the West, and the standardization activity is active now. The discussion for deregulation is being continued in also Japan, and regulation values have been proposed. Another topic in this paper is a sensor network application of PLC, which is an indoor fine-grained localization system by acoustic Direct-Sequence Code Division Multiplexed (DS-CDM) signals. The obtained average accuracy of the localization in a 4 m2 plane was 1 cm if there was no obstacle. To realize the localization system, some novel ideas, such as PLC speakers, a synchronization method based on the zero-crossing timing of the mains frequency, and integrated wired/wireless PLC, are introduced.

We have already proposed a carrier power control scheme of OFDM that makes it possible to improve the bit error rate characteristic. However, the data on the lost carriers by the severe fading or large additive noise can't be recovered by only this power control scheme. In this paper, a method of transmission power control of OFDM carriers combined with data spreading scheme in the frequency domain is proposed. In the proposed system, transmission power of each carrier is controlled so as to maximize the average signal to noise ratio of the data symbols after de-spreading the signals from DFT. As the results of computer simulations, it is confirmed that the proposed system can improve the bit error rate characteristics under multi-path channel.

In narrow band power-line communication (PLC) systems, which use frequency band below a few hundred kHz, the noise on power-line is non-white and non-stationary. Under such environment, the performance of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) modulation system is analyzed, and time and frequency dependence of bit error rate (BER) is clarified. In addition, the possibility of performance improvement with the symbol level repetition coding employing cyclo-stationary feature of power-line noise is presented.

Power-line communication (PLC) systems have been assumed as the systems of low speed and low reliability. The low qualities of the systems, however, are not inherent of PLC but the result of inadequate design strategy of the systems. The systems with proper considerations of the characteristics of power-line as a communication medium achieve reliable high-speed data transmission in power-lines. In fact, the activities on the standardization of high-speed PLC systems have recently started in many countries, and variety of high-speed PLC systems are being to be purchased off-the-shelf. Following this trend of PLC, this manuscript first describes the features of power-line for communications and then explains technical issues on the design of PLC systems of the next generations as the infrastructure of information-communication technology age.

This paper describes a digital delay-lock Loop (DLL) to which delta-sigma (Δ Σ) modulation technique is applied in order to reduce circuit elements. The DLL is evaluated in both transient and steady-state behavior by theoretical analysis, computer simulations and circuit experiments. Not deteriorated by the internally generated Δ Σ-modulation noise, the DLL shows good tracking performance in transient response and steady-state RMS jitter of phase error against additive white Gaussian noise. Using the proposed DLL most parts of receiving circuits are realized by digital integrated circuits. After realizing the circuit, power-line communication system with spread spectrum is possibly expected in a small size with low cost.