2014 18th IEEE International Symposium on Power Line Communications and Its Applications

Statistical Analysis of Brazilian In-Home PLC

Channels: First Results

Juan Valencia‡ , Thiago R. Oliveira‡,† , Fernando J. A. Andrade‡ and Moises V. Ribeiro‡,∗

‡
UFJF - Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Electrical Engineering Department, Brazil.
†
IFSEMG - Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of the Southeast of Minas Gerais
Campus Juiz de Fora, Brazil.
∗
Smarti9 Ltda.
Emails: jvalencia.payan@gmail.com; thiago.oliveira@ifsudestemg.edu.br;
fjaandrade@engenharia.ufjf.br; mribeiro@ieee.org

Abstract—This contribution outlines a statistical characteriza-
tion of Brazilian in-home and low-voltage electric energy distribu-
tion networks as a data communication medium. The discussions
are based on estimated channels obtained in a measurement
campaign carried out in several apartments whose size ranges
from 50 up to 90 square meters. The parameters considered for
this analysis is the root-mean square delay spread (RMS-DS),
the average channel gain, and the channel capacity. For the sake
of comparison with electric networks in US, the frequency band
ranging from 1.705 up to 30 MHz was set. The reported analysis
shows that the RMS-DS can be modeled as a log-normal variable
in only 33.33% of the cases and the average channel gain does
not follow a log-normal distribution, the average channel gain is
lower in Brazil than in US and the inter-symbol interference is
quite similar in both US and Brazil.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The developed countries have carried out extensive mea-
surement campaigns and statistical analysis to characterize in-
home (IH) and low-voltage (LV) electric power grids to offer
new data communication medium for narrowband and broad-
band applications. In this case, the well-known power line
communications (PLC) technology is applied. It is recognized
that the correct understanding of the so-called IH-LV PLC
channels is a pre-condition for designing PLC systems that can
offer improved performance in terms of throughput for a given
limited availability of resources (power and/or bandwidth). As
a result of such huge research and development efforts, the
suitability of PLC channels for data communication has been
revealed. Also, it was supported by the introduction of IEEE
and ITU-T standards, as well as, commercial PLC technologies
that can support 1 Gbps at the physical layer.
These measurement campaigns have confirmed that the IH-
LV channels presents a considerable variability that is related
to resident incomes. On the one hand, if the income is high,
then the residents own many appliances that are connected
to the IH electric power grids. Therefore, there is a lot of
impedance mismatching, the channel is both time and fre-
quency selective, and the presence of noise is high; as a conse-
quence, the suitability of such grids for data communication is
reduced. On the other hand, if the income is low, it is predicted
that the PLC system performance is high because the number
of appliances connected to the grid is reduced. However, it
is not a simple task to come up with a model that perfectly
characterizes the behavior of PLC channels everywhere, due
to the lack of information in some places and the huge amount
of measurements required to generalize a model.
Despite of the sustainable economic expansion in the past
decade, Brazil is a country in which the majority of the
population has a low income in comparison to the developed
countries. Therefore, it urges to characterize IH-LV PLC
channels to point out in which situations the PLC systems
can be a viable data communication solution. Regarding the
analysis of electric distribution networks for data communica-
tion, the top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used
to characterize the PLC channels. While the former analyzes
these networks as a black box, the latter demands complete
knowledge of the electric distribution networks. Also, deter-
ministic models were used to model such channels; however,
the current tendencies are in favor of statistical models because
it is recognized that PLC channels behave as random processes.
In order to offer a statistical characterization IH and LV
electric energy distribution networks in Brazil, this contribution
presents an analysis based on estimated channels, which were
obtained in a measurement campaign carried out in several
apartments whose size ranges from 50 and 90 square meters.
The parameters considered for this analysis is the root-mean
square delay spread (RMS-DS), average channel gain and
channel capacity. For the sake of comparison with IH-LV
electric networks in US, the frequency band ranges from 1.705
up to 30 MHz was considered. The reported analysis shows
that the RMS-DS can be modeled as a log-normal variable in
only 33.33% of the cases, the average channel gain does not
follow a log-normal distribution, the average channel gain is
lower in Brazil than in US, and the inter-symbol interference
might be similar in US and Brazil.
This paper is organized as follows: the measurement setup
and campaign are detailed in Section II. The parameters used
to characterize the PLC channels are described in Section III.
The numerical analysis and comparisons are presented and
discussed in Section IV. Finally, concluding remarks are stated
in Section V.
II. S HORT D ESCRIPTION OF THE M EASUREMENT S ETUP
AND C AMPAIGN
In order to characterize PLC channels, a measurement
campaign was carried out in middle class apartments (area
between 50 and 90 square meters). The measurement setup is

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a simplified version of the one described in [1]. It is called A. Average Channel Gain
simplified version because the IH and LV electric distribution
The average channel gain is calculated by [3]
grids cover short distances and the accessories, such as the
N −1
!
metallic box and signal amplifiers are not required. Basically, 1 1 X
the simplified measurement setup is constituted by transmitter G= |H[k]|2 . (1)
(Tx) and receiver (Rx) equipment. The Tx is composed of a N N
k=0
waveform generation board (16 bits and 200 Msps) mounted
in a rugged industrial computer, and a coupling device for LV B. Channel Impulse Response Duration
electric grids covering the frequency bandwidth between 1.7 The channel impulse response duration is defined as the
and 100 MHz. The Rx equipment is constituted by a waveform time interval that contains a certain percentage of the total
acquisition board (16 bits and 200 Msps) mounted in a rugged energy of impulse response, e.g. 99%, 99.9% or 99.99%. The
industrial computer, and a coupling device equal to the one signal energy estimation (SEE) technique was used in order to
used in the transmitter. Both acquisition boards are connected estimate the effective duration of the channel impulse response
to an atomic oscillator to minimize the effect of the clock [4]. Consider the effective channel impulse response composed
offset. by M samples and assume the n-th sample of the estimated
impulse response given by
The signal processing techniques applied to estimate the
frequency response of the PLC channel is based on a sounding h[n] = s[n] + e[n], n = 0, 1, ..., N − 1, (2)
approach, see [2]. Basically, it is an orthogonal frequency where s[n] denotes the n-th sample of the channel impulse
division multiplexing (OFDM)-based technique working to- response and e[n] denotes the n-th sample of the estimation
gether with symbol synchronization and frequency domain error, modeled as a zero-mean white Gaussian noise with the
channel estimation based on zero-forcing criterion. For the unknown variance σe2 .
measurement campaign, the lengths of OFDM symbols and
cyclic prefix are equal to N = 2048 and NCP = 512, The application of the SEE technique consists in estimate
respectively. The sampling frequency at the Tx and Rx is equal M , where M < N , from the channel impulse response
−1
to Fs = 200 MHz. Based on the aforementioned information, it sequence {h[n]}Nn=0 , and requires the calculation of the total
is assumed that the channel impulse response is time-invariant and deterministic signal energy, which is expressed by
during a period longer than (2N + NCP )/Fs = 23.04 us. N
X −1
Es , |s[n]|2 = Eh − Ee , (3)
The procedure adopted to measure the PLC channels in the n=0
apartments is described as follows: First, it is checked if the −1
chosen power outlets belong to the same electric circuits. In the where Eh and Ee are the energies of the sequences {h[n]}N n=0
N −1
sequel, the coupling devices of both Tx and Rx equipment are and {e[n]}n=0 , respectively. These energies can be calculated
connected one by one to two distinct power outlets belonging by using the expressions
to the same electric circuit. The rugged industrial computers N
X −1
E |h[n]|2

are turned on and the waveform related to OFDM symbols are Eh , (4)
stored in the memory of the waveform generation board. After n=0
that, the waveform generation board is set to continuously and
present at its output OFDM symbols. At the same time, the
N −1
waveform acquisition board is set to start the signal acquisition. X N
E |e[n]|2 =

This procedure was adopted several times and a total of 27 Ee , ELN , (5)
n=0
N −L+1
measures were obtained. Note that each measure is constituted
by a large number of OFDM symbols and, because of that, a in which E{.} denotes the expectation operator; the constant
large number of estimates of PLC channels were obtained. All value L must be large enough following M ≤ L ≤ N ; ELN
estimates of the PLC channels were obtained offline. N −1
denotes the total energy of {h[n]}n=L , expressed by
N −1
Due to the time-invariant assumption for time interval
X
E |h[n]|2 = (N − L + 1) σe2 .

ELN , (6)
longer than 23.04 us, an estimation of the frequency re-
n=L
sponse of the PLC channels is represented by {H[k]}, k =
0, 1, ..., N −1. By defining the vector H = [H0 H1 ... HN −1 ]T For practical purposes, Eh and ELN can be calculated,
such that Hk = H[k], then h = (1/N ) W† H, in which W† is −1
NP −1
NP
the inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) matrix and {† } respectively, as Êh = |h[n]|2 and ÊLN = |h[n]|2 .
n=0 n=L
is the Hermitian operator. Therefore, (3) can be rewritten as
N
Ês = Eˆh − ÊLN . (7)
N −L+1

III. PARAMETERS FOR I N -H OME P OWER L INE C HANNELS The procedure to estimate the effective channel impulse
response duration (M̂SEE ) is described in Algorithm 1.
In this section the widely known parameters that are The channel impulse response duration for one measured
applied to characterize PLC channels are described. PLC channel is shown in Fig. 1.

128
Algorithm 1 SEE algorithm D. Channel Capacity
Step 1: Calculate Ês . The channel capacity can be evaluated by using the expres-
Step 2: Set M̆ = 1 and Ês0 = 0. sion
ˆ
Step 3: Compute Ês0 = Ês0 + |h[M̆ ]|2 − ENe . N −1
PT X [k]|H[k]|2
 
BX
Step 4: If Ês0 = k Ês0 (0.9 ≤ k ≤ 0.9999) or M̆ = L then C= log2 1 + , (12)
M̂SEE = M̆ and stop the algorithm. Otherwise M̆ = M + 1 N n=0 PN [k]
and go to Step 3. where B is the frequency bandwidth, N is the number of the
considered sub-carriers. P [k] is the allocated power to the k-th
0.16 subcarrier; and PN [k] is the noise power at the k-th subcarrier.
0.14
In this paper, it is assumed that PT X [k] = P/N , where P is
the total transmission power.
0.12

0.1
IV. R ESULTS
0.08
This section presents an analysis of the IH-LV PLC channel
h(t)

0.06
by considering the parameters listed in Section III. The RMS-
SEE 99.99%
0.04 SEE 99% SEE 99.9% 3.433 us DS and the average channel gain estimates are compared to
1.867 us 3.033 us
0.02
the United States (US) estimates, which are presented in [3].
Also, a channel capacity analysis is presented for the Brazilian
0
homes case. To evaluate the log-normality relationship between
−0.02 the RMS-DS and the average channel gain, each of them was
−0.04
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
tested using a normal fiting. Additionally, they were evaluated
Time [us] through the Jarque-Bera, Lilliefors and Chi-square normality
tests at the 5% of significance level.
Figure 1: IH power line channel impulse response.
A. RMS-DS Log-normality
The log-normality of the RMS-DS was investigated by test-
C. RMS Delay Spread (RMS-DS) ing the logarithm of the RMS-DS against a normal distribution.
On the one hand, by analyzing Fig. 2, it is not clear that the
The root-mean square delay spread (RMS-DS) is the square RMS-DS follows an exactly normal distribution. On the other
root of the second central moment of a power-delay profile, hand, it was found that 33.33% of the cases confirmed log-
which provides an indication of the dispersion or distribution normality of RMS-DS at the 5% of significance level for the
of the transmitted power over various paths in a multipath IH-LV Brazilian PLC channels.
propagation model [5]. The RMS-DS also gives an indication
160
of the nature of the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and it is
a value usually smaller than the impulse response duration. If 140
M is the effective number of samples of the channel impulse
response and Ts is the sampling period, the RMS-DS (στ ) is 120
expressed by
100
στ = Ts σ0 , (8)
80

in which
60
q
0
σ0 = µ0 − µ20 , (9) 40

−1
NP
20
n|h [n] |2
n=0
µ0 = NP−1
(10) 0
−78 −76 −74 −72 −70 −68 −66 −64 −62 −60
|h [n] |2 10 log10(RMS−DS)
i=0
Figure 2: RMS-DS log-normality test.
and
−1
NP
n2 |h [n] |2
0 n=0 B. Average Channel Gain Log-normality
µ0 = −1
NP
. (11)
Similarly to the RMS-DS, the average channel gain was
|h [n] |2
i=0 evaluated against normality tests and normal fitting. In Fig.
3 the logarithm of the average channel gain is presented.
Note that σ0 is the RMS-DS normalized to a unitary sampling Observing this figure, the channel gain apparently does not
time and µ0 is the average delay. follow a normal distribution. Additionally, in 100% of the

129
cases, the log-normality was rejected, when the normality tests For the case of channel attenuation statistics, it is possible
were used. to see that the Brazilian PLC channels are characterized with
lower attenuation values, in which the worst case is even less
160
than 40 dB.
140
90
120 US IH PLC − sub−urban
80 US IH PLC − urban
US MV PLC
100 70 Brazil IH PLC − urban

60

Channel Attenuation [dB]

80
50
60
40

40 30

20 20

10
0
−35 −30 −25 −20 −15 −10 −5 0
0
10 log10G

−10
Min Max Mean Std. Dev Kurtosis Skewness 50%ile 90%ile
Figure 3: Average channel gain log-normality test.
Figure 5: Channel attenuation statistics comparison between
the US IH-LV, US MV and Brazilain IH-LV PLC channels.
C. RMS-DS and Average Channel Gain The channel attenuation is calculated as Adb = −GdB .

According to [3], the RMS-DS and the average channel

gain are negatively correlated log-normal random variables, for
the LV and medium voltage (MV) PLC channels in the US. By
analyzing the same parameters of the IH-LV PLC channels in
Brazil, it was observed the same negative correlation between
the RMS-DS and the average channel gain as in the US case.
This behavior is presented using a scatter plot shown in Fig.
4.
The RMS-DS statistics comparison shows a strong simi-
larity between the IH-US and IH-Brazilian cases. This might
lead us to think that the Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) in
both US and Brazilian regions has not big differences. It can
also be regarded that the IH-US sub-urban case presents high
RMS-DS values over the other evaluated cases.
8

0.7 US IH PLC − sub−urban

7 US IH PLC − urban
US MV PLC
0.6 6 Brazil IH PLC − urban

5
0.5
RMS−DS [us]

4
RMS−DS [us]

0.4
3

0.3 2

0.2 1

0
0.1
−1
Min Max Mean Std. Dev Kurtosis Skewness 50%ile 90%ile
0
−40 −35 −30 −25 −20 −15 −10 −5
Channel Gain [dB] Figure 6: RMS-DS channel statistics comparison between the
US IH LV, US MV and Brazilian IH LV links.
Figure 4: Scatter plot of IH-LV PLC channels measured in
Brazil with a least squares trend line.
D. Channel Capacity
The statistical values of the measured channel attenuation In order to investigate the channel capacity presented in the
and the measured RMS-DS of Brazilian IH-LV PLC channels, measured channels, the total transmitted power was simulated
are compared to the US MV and IH-LV PLC channels pre- in order to estimate the data rates that can be achieved in
sented in [3]. These comparisons can be regarded in Fig. 5, for different outlet pairs. This power varied from −10 up to 30 dB.
the RMS-DS statistics and in Fig. 6, for the channel attenuation From Fig. 7 it can be noted that the mean capacity ranges from
statistics. 45 up to 350 Mbps.

130
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Mean
Max
channels,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 59, no. 5, pp.
Min
1332–1345, 2011.
500
[4] H. Li, Z. Bi, D. Liu, J. Li, and P. Stoica, “Channel order and RMS
delay spread estimation for AC power line communications,” in Proc.
ChannelbCapacityb[Mbps]

400 IEEE Workshop on Statistical Signal and Array Processing, 2000, pp.
229–233.
[5] M. Tlich, G. Avril, and A. Zeddam, “Coherence bandwidth and its
300 relationship with the RMS delay spread for PLC channels using mea-
surements up to 100 MHz,” in Home Networking, ser. IFIP International
Federation for Information Processing, K. Agha, X. Carcelle, and G. Pu-
200 jolle, Eds. Springer US, 2008, vol. 256, pp. 129–142.

100

0
−40 −35 −30 −25 −20 −15 −10 −5 0
TransmissionbPowerb[dB]

Figure 7: Channel capacity in terms of transmission power for

IH-LV PLC channels in the Brazil.

V. C ONCLUSIONS
After considering the RMS-DS and average channel gain
estimates, it is possible to conclude that the IH-LV PLC
channel in Brazil might have higher ISI than in US.
In only 33.33% of the IH-LV PLC channels measured in
Brazil the log-normality was confirmed for the RMS-DS, and
in 100% of the channels the log-normality was rejected for the
average channel gain. Therefore, the log-normality tests in this
work cast doubt with the results in [3], where the log-normality
for the average channel gain and the RMS-DS is confirmed.
However, the negative relation between the channel gain and
the RMS-DS was found as stated in [3]. Moreover, it could
be noted that the statistics of IH-LV PLC channels measured
in Brazil are close to US PLC channels analyzed in [3]. This
information can be used in order to design PLC systems that
might be available in both US and Brazil.
As a future work, a more extended measurement campaign
in urban, sub-urban and MV electric grids will take place, in
order to enhance the current statistical results by exploring
more scenarios in Brazil, as well as, to generate novel PLC
channel models.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank CNPq, CAPES,
FAPEMIG, FINEP, P&D ANEEL-CEMIG, Smarti9 Ltda., and
INERGE.

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