applied

sciences
Article
Performance Comparisons of Broadband Power Line
Communication Technologies
Young Mo Chung
Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Hansung University, Seoul 02876, Korea;
ymchung@hansung.ac.kr; Tel.: +82-2-760-4342




Received: 5 April 2020; Accepted: 6 May 2020 ; Published: 9 May 2020


Abstract: Broadband power line communication (PLC) is used as a communication technique for
advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) in Korea. High-speed (HS) PLC specified in ISO/IEC12139-1
and HomePlug Green PHY (HPGP) are deployed for remote metering. Recently, internet of things
(IoT) PLC has been proposed for reliable communications on harsh power line channels. In this
paper, the physical layer performance of IoT PLC, HPGP, and HS PLC is evaluated and compared.
Three aspects of the performance are evaluated: the bit rate, power spectrum, and bit error rate
(BER). An expression for the bit rate for IoT PLC and HPGP is derived while taking the padding bits
and number of tones in use into consideration. The power spectrum is obtained through computer
simulations. For the BER performance comparisons, the upper bound of the BER for each PLC
standard is evaluated through computer simulations.

Keywords: advanced metering infrastructure; power line communication; IoT PLC; HPGP;
ISO/IEC 12139-1; HS PLC; bit error rate

1. Introduction
In a smart grid, the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is responsible for collecting data
from consumer utilities and giving commands to them. AMI consists of smart meters, communication
networks, and data managing systems [1,2]. An important challenge in building an AMI is choosing
a cost-effective communication network [2–4]. As a field communication method for AMI, power
line communication (PLC) or wireless communication can be considered. PLC deploys a pre-existent
transmission medium, represented by the wires where the communication nodes are connected,
so deployment and operating costs can be low.
PLC technologies can be classified into narrowband and broadband PLC according to the frequency
bandwidth used. Narrowband PLC generally provides low data rates due to the narrow bandwidth
of 3–500 kHz. To overcome the limitations of low rates and accommodate various service demands
for utilities, powerline intelligent metering evolution (PRIME) and G3-PLC based on the orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing technology were introduced [5]. These narrowband PLC technologies
have been deployed for communication methods for AMI in European countries [5]. Broadband PLC
uses a wide frequency bandwidth of 2–30 MHz. ITU-T G.hn, IEEE 1901, and ISO/IEC12139-1 [2,6] have
been established as standards for broadband PLC. The HomePlug Powerline Alliance has also developed
the HomePlug Green PHY (HPGP) standard for broadband PLC technology [7].
In Korea, most low-voltage customers are powered by pole-mounted transformers, and, on
average, dozens of customers are connected to the transformer. The Korea Electric Power Corporation
(KEPCO), a Korean power company, uses the ISO/IEC12139-1 standard PLC as an AMI field
communication method in downtown residential areas [2]. The method is also referred to as high-speed
(HS) PLC or Korean Industrial Standards (KS) PLC. HPGP is also being used in downtown areas.
KEPCO plans to build AMI networks for 22.50 million low-voltage customers by 2020 [2,8].

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306; doi:10.3390/app10093306 www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci

Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 2 of 21

In addition, several new services such as load profile (LP) metering and time-of-use (TOU) pricing
are planned nationwide using AMI networks. To provide these services properly, more reliable
communication is required. Recently, a new broadband PLC technology called IoT PLC [9] has
been proposed for robust communication on power line channels. IoT PLC has several features for
reliable communication. For example, it provides robustness to intersymbol interference (ISI) using
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with a longer guard interval than other methods,
and convolutional turbo code (CTC) is used for forward error correction (FEC). In addition, it has a
wide selectable range of repetitions from 1 to 15 for the coded bits, providing flexible transmission
modes depending on the channel conditions. Currently, IoT PLC is being tested for deployment in
Korea. One of three PLC technologies will be chosen for AMI through a performance competition: HS
PLC, HPGP, or IoT PLC. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and compare the performance of these
PLC technologies.
A PLC signal received through a power line is distorted due to the multipath propagation. Several
broadband PLC channel models are available in [10,11]. One channel model is based on the transmission
line (TM) theory and is suitable for the specified PLC network topology [12–16]. This model is known
to have a realistic description of in-home power line topology [17]. Another channel model is obtained
by matching the parametric multipath model of the channel frequency response with real data obtained
from measurements [18]. This model represents the PLC channel as a finite sum of delayed echoes with
different amplitudes [17]. In this paper, a broadband channel model in [18] is used for simulation and
performance comparison. It is readily applied to an outdoor power line environment with obtained
parameters in [18].
In addition, PLC signals are also corrupted by noise added by the power line channel. The noise
is modeled as background noise added by impulsive noise [10,19–22]. The performance of the OFDM
transmission scheme for PLC applications was investigated with the channel model in the presence of
noise [22,23]. Studies on narrowband PLC standards such as G3-PLC and PRIME were conducted in [24,
25]. When it comes to performance comparisons of PLC standards, a few results have been reported.
For narrowband PLC technologies, the performances of the physical layers of G3-PLC and PRIME
were compared on a frequency-selective channel with additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) [26].
In [27], performance comparisons were conducted with different noise environments. Physical layers
of narrowband PLC including IEEE1901.2 were compared under AWGN and narrowband interferer
in [28]. Recently, Llano et al. [5] compared the performances of the latest versions of the standards
including PRIME 1.4 with that of G3-PLC coherent mode. The comparisons were made through the
test metrics defined by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in the presence of
standard and controlled noise patterns. Unlike the physical layer of the narrowband PLC standards,
studies are not widely conducted on the physical layer of broadband PLC standards. Especially, results
of performance comparisons of broadband PLC standards such as HPGP and HS PLC have not been
reported yet.
In this paper, studies on the performance evaluation of the IoT PLC as well as HPGP and HS
PLC are conducted. The performances are evaluated in three aspects of the physical layer: the bit rate,
power spectrum, and bit error rate (BER). The bit rates of the PLC are obtained with mathematical
formulas. The power spectrum is obtained with a PLC signal generated by the computer in MATLAB
codes. These two evaluations are relatively easy and simple compared to the BER evaluation. For the
BER comparison, we obtain the upper bound of the performance for each standard. The BER
performance depends on the transmitted signal specified in the standard and the receiver architecture.
However, the receiver architecture is not specified in the standard. Therefore, it is assumed that each
PLC receiver achieves the best performance possible. The equalizer in each receiver has a one-tap filter
and is assumed to have a perfect channel estimation. In this context, impulsive noise is not included
since our purpose is to obtain the upper performance bound for each PLC. For background noise,
colored noise is known to reflect the noise of the PLC environment better. However, AWGN is also
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 3 of 21

considered useful when comparing the upper performance bound of the PLC. Through computer
simulations, the upper bound of the performance of each PLC standard is evaluated and compared.

2. Structures of PLC

2.1. IoT PLC

The structure of an IoT PLC transmitter is shown in Figure 1 [9]. Two information subblocks A
and B with N bits are provided to the CTC encoder. IoT PLC uses two values for N. For the data frame
(DF), which is used for data transmission, N is 1440. The control frame (CF) or Mini DF uses a shorter
frame length. For these frames, N is 48.

Figure 1. Block diagram of IoT PLC.

2.1.1. CTC Encoder

Figure 2 shows block diagram of the CTC encoder [9,29]. The CTC consists of two constituent
encoders and a CTC interleaver as shown in Figure 2a. A double binary circular recursive systematic
convolutional (RSC) encoder with a constraint length of 4 is used for the constituent encoder. Figure 2b
shows the constituent encoder. When blocks A and B are encoded, a parity bit block Y1 is generated.
The inputs are then interleaved by the CTC interleaver, and the interleaved bits are encoded again by
the constituent encoder, generating a parity block Y2 . Y1 and Y2 each have N bits. The CTC interleaver
shuffles the bit order in such a way that the bits are spread as evenly as possible. The outputs of
the CTC encoder are A, B, Y1 , and Y2 , resulting in 4N output bits. For the initial state of the encoder,
the start and end states are set to be the same, which is known as tail biting encoding and can improve
the decoding performance without adding trailing bits at the encoder [30]. The CTC encoder generates
4N bits with a 2N bit input, resulting in a code rate of 1/2.

(a) (b)

Figure 2. Block diagram of CTC encoder: (a) CTC encoder; and (b) constituent encoder.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 4 of 21

2.1.2. Interleavers
Subblocks A, B, Y1 , and Y2 have their own subblock interleavers, which shuffle input bits within
each subblock. The interleaver disperses corrupted bits in succession, thus burst bit errors are changed to
random errors. The interleaved subblocks for A, B, Y1 , and Y2 are denoted as A0 , B0 , Y10 , and Y20 , respectively.
Since turbo code works best for the random errors [31,32], the more dispersion there is, the better the
interleaver. The bit selection block next to the subblock interleaver rearranges Y1 and Y2 once again: bits
in Y10 are allocated to the odd positions in the output, and bits in Y20 are allocated to the even positions.
The outputs of the bit selection block for parity blocks Y10 and Y20 are denoted as W10 and W20 .
Figure 3 shows the subblock interleaver and bit selection test inputs and their outputs for N = 1440
as an example. For visualization, integer numbers instead of binary numbers are assigned to subblock
inputs. The subblock A has linearly increasing positive numbers, while B has decreasing negative
numbers. In the same way, Y1 and Y2 are assigned but with larger and smaller slopes than A and
B, respectively. The horizontal axis represents the sequence position and the vertical axis the value.
The shuffled subblock A0 has only positive values, which means that A is interleaved within the
subblock. This also applies to subblock B. However, for the subblocks Y1 and Y2 , the outputs have
both positive and negative values, which means that they are mixed together.

Subblock A, B, Y1 , Y 2 Subblock interleaver/bit selection output

3000 3000

2000 2000

1000 1000
Value

Value

0 0

-1000 -1000

-2000 -2000

-3000 -3000
500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 4000 4500 5000 5500
Data position Data position

(a) (b)

Figure 3. Subblock interleaver and bit selection block: (a) test input; and (b) output.

The channel interleaver further rearranges the input stream to improve the error correction
capability of the CTC encoder by changing burst errors to random errors. Note that the channel
interleaver works for all input data instead of subblocks. All bits from the four subblocks are
successively written to a channel interleaving matrix in columns, and the bits of the matrix are
read in rows. Row-by-row readings are done not continuously, but at regular intervals to separate the
input bits as much as possible. The interleaver matrix has sizes of 720 × 8 for N = 1440 and 24 × 8 for
N = 48.
Figure 4 shows the channel interleaver test input and corresponding output for N = 1440.
For visualization, integer numbers instead of binary numbers are assigned for the inputs. The input
has linearly increasing positive numbers. The horizontal axis represents the data sequence position
and the vertical axis represents the value. From the channel interleaver output stream, the input data
are dispersed evenly, thus the adjacent bits for each bit are placed as far apart as possible.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 5 of 21

Channel interleaver input Channel interleaver output

6000 6000

5000 5000

4000 4000
Value

Value
3000 3000

2000 2000

1000 1000

0 0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000
Data position Data position

(a) (b)

Figure 4. Channel interleaver: (a) test input; and (b) output.

2.1.3. Diversity Mapper

The diversity mapper copies the input bits by a specified number of times. The number of copies
is specified by parameter DVn . Users can set the values of DVn from 1 to 15. OFDM is used in the
transmission technique. The copied bits are placed at different frequencies and times of OFDM symbols.
This gives the input bit frequency and time diversity, providing robustness against frequency-selective
and time-varying distortions in the PLC channel.
An OFDM symbol has a number of usable subcarriers, or tones, denoted as Ntone . Each tone
can transmit Nbpt bits, depending on the modulation scheme used. When quadrature phase shift
keying (QPSK) is used for modulation, Nbpt = 2. The number of diversity mapper input bits is 4N
and the number of copies is DVn . Then, the number of bits to be transmitted is 4N × DVn bits and
an OFDM symbol can carry up to Ntone × Nbpt bits. Note that 4N × DVn is not always an integer
multiples of Ntone × Nbpt . The number of tones in use is denoted as Ntone 0 , and extra padding bits are

introduced. The padding bits are added at the end of the diversity mapper input bits and copied
together. The padding bits are filled with the preceding bits of the diversity mapper inputs. The number
of padding bits is denoted as Npad , and the number of required OFDM symbols is denoted as Nsym .
Then, the following equation should hold for all integer-valued variables.

0
(4N + Npad ) × DVn = ( Ntone × Nbpt ) × Nsym . (1)

A method is described to find Ntone 0 , N

pad , and Nsym when integer values are given for
N, DVn , Ntone , and Nbpt [9]. Figure 5a shows Npad and Ntone 0 according to DVn when N = 1440,
Ntone = 800, and Nbpt = 2. It is observed that Npad varies from 0 to 640 depending on DVn . However,
0
the variation of Ntone is very small.
Next, it is necessary to place the copied bits far apart in the frequency bands of OFDM symbols
to fully exploit frequency diversity. The detailed frequency mapping algorithm is described in [9].
Figure 5b shows the frequency allocation result for the copied bits when DVn = 15 as an example.
When DVn = 15, Ntone 0 = 795, Nbpt = 2, and N = 1440, 55 OFDM symbols are required for the entire
data transmission. The horizontal axis represents time, more specifically, the OFDM symbol sequence
number. The vertical axis represents frequency, i.e., the subcarrier number of the OFDM symbol. It is
noted that 15 copies of a bit are located at different frequencies and times with a considerable distance,
providing robustness against distortions in both the frequency and time domain.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 6 of 21

Npad and N' tone according to DVn DVn =15, Nsym =55, N' tone =795
800
800
700
Number of padding bits or tones in use

700 Npad
N'tone
600
600

Subcarrier number
500
500

400
400

300 300

200 200

100 100

0 0
0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55
DVn Symbol number

(a) (b)

Figure 5. Diversity mapper: (a) number of padding bits and tones in use; and (b) locations of the copied bits.

2.1.4. Modulation, IFFT, CP/CS Insertion, and Windowing

For modulations, both coherent and noncoherent schemes are used. For the coherent scheme,
QPSK or 16-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM) is used. 16QAM has 16 signal space
points, thus 4 bits can be conveyed by one 16QAM symbol. For a noncoherent scheme, π/4-differential
phase shift keying (π/4-DQPSK) is used. With the selected modulation technique, the binary values
from the diversity mapper are converted to complex symbols.
OFDM symbols are produced by an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT). By modulation,
1280 complex symbols and their complex conjugates are converted to a real-valued OFDM symbol
through a 2560-point IFFT. OFDM symbols have a cyclic prefix (CP) and a cyclic suffix (CS) before and
after each symbol, respectively. The CP and CS make symbols resistant to intersymbol interference
(ISI). For the CP and CS, 944 and 336 samples are used, respectively. Figure 6 shows an OFDM symbol
structure.

Figure 6. OFDM symbol.

At both ends of the symbol, samples are shaped to have a good power spectrum, and the interval
is referred to as roll-off interval (RI), as shown in Figure 6. A detailed description of values in Figure 6 is
given in [9]. For the pulse shaping, raised-cosine windowing is used. For the RI, 320 samples are used.
The RI is overlapped and added to the adjacent RIs. The sampling frequency f s is 62.5 MHz. There
are 3520 samples in an OFDM symbol period Ts , which corresponds to 56.32 µs. Finally, the OFDM
symbols go to the analog interface (I/F) block, and the output signal is transmitted to the receiver
through the channel.

2.2. HPGP
A detailed description of HPGP is found in [7]. In this section, a brief description for the physical
layer of HPGP is given for the sake of completeness. In Figure 7, a block diagram for the physical
layer of HPGP is shown. The information bits are provided in physical block (PB) units. For payload
symbols, PB136 and 520 are used, which have 136 and 520 bytes in the block, respectively. For FEC, a
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 7 of 21

rate 1/2 turbo convolutional code is used and a double binary RSC encoder with a constraint length
of 4 is used for the constituent encoder. The turbo convolutional code of HPGP is similar to the CTC
of IoT PLC. However, the generator and feedback polynomials of the constituent coder are different.
At PB136, there are 1088 input bits. Thus, the size of each input block N is 544. For PB520, N is 2080.

Figure 7. Block diagram of HPGP.

The encoded bits go to the channel interleaver. The channel interleaver uses an interleaver
matrix. In HPGP, information blocks and parity blocks are interleaved separately, unlike in IoT PLC.
Two 1040 × 4 matrices are used for PB520, while two 272 × 4 matrices are used for PB136. The row-wise
4-bit output of each matrix is shuffled once more through subblock switching. The robust OFDM
(ROBO) interleaver copies the input bits for the output. The function is essentially the same as the
diversity mapper of IoT PLC. HPGP has three ROBO modes: standard (STD), high speed (HS), and
mini (MINI). The number of copies for the input bits for STD, HS, and MINI modes is 4, 2, and 5,
respectively. STD and HS modes use PB520, whereas MINI mode uses PB136.
HPGP uses OFDM for the transmission technique. For modulation, only coherent QPSK is used.
The number of IFFT points is 3072. CP is also used to mitigate the effect of ISI. However, CS is not used
in HPGP. There are 372 samples of RI at both ends of the symbol. For the pulse shaping, raised-cosine
windowing is used. The sampling frequency f s is 75 MHz. It is noted that the length of the guard
interval (GI) depends on the ROBO modes. The length of GI is the length of CP minus RI. In STD and
HS modes, 417 samples are assigned to the GI, whereas 567 samples are assigned to the MINI mode.
The OFDM symbol period is (3072 + GI) samples long, which corresponds to (40.96 + τ) µs. For STD
and HS modes, τ = 5.56 µs, whereas τ = 7.56 µs for MINI mode.

2.3. HS PLC
In this section, a brief description for the physical layer of HS PLC [6] is given. In Figure 8, a block
diagram of the HS PLC physical layer is shown. The binary input is provided to the FEC block. For data
frames, different FEC schemes are used according to three operating modes: NORMAL, diversity (DV),
and extended diversity (EDV) mode. For NORMAL mode, a concatenated code with Reed–Solomon
(RS) and convolutional code is used. The RS code uses a shortened code of (255, 239). The rate of the
convolutional code is 1/2 or 3/4 and the constraint length is 7. For signal transmission in HS PLC, discrete
multi-tone is used, which is essentially the same as OFDM. Thus, in this paper, it is called OFDM instead
of DMT. A symbol block (SB) consists of 16 OFDM symbols. Encoding is performed by each SB unit.
Then, the encoded bits of an SB are interleaved with an interleaving matrix of size NBPS × 16, where NBPS
represents the number of bits in an OFDM symbol. NBPS depends on the modulation method, which is
determined by the channel conditions. In NORMAL mode, encoded bits bypass the diversity mapper.
For modulation, differential phase shift keying (DBPSK), DQPSK, or differential 8 phase shift keying
(D8PSK) is used for each subcarrier of OFDM. The selection among the three modulations is made based
on the channel condition. Information on the modulations selected for all the subcarriers is called a tone
map (TM) and is transmitted to the communicating receivers.

Figure 8. Block diagram of HS PLC.

In DV mode, (20, 12) RS code is used. An input block of 96 bits is encoded, and a 160-bit output
block is generated. These output bits go to the diversity mapper directly, and are transmitted by 16
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 8 of 21

OFDM symbols. In an OFDM symbol, 124 subcarriers with DBPSK are used and 10 encoded bits
are transmitted. Thus, each encoded bit is copied at least 12 times. DV mode is the most reliable
communication mode in HS PLC. In the case of EDV mode, (56, 40) RS code is used. This encoder
generates 448 bits with a 320-bit input block. These output bits go to the diversity mapper directly,
and are transmitted by 16 OFDM symbols as in DV mode. In an OFDM symbol, 152 subcarriers with
DBPSK are used, and 28 encoded bits are transmitted, resulting in five copies for each encoded bit.
The number of IFFT points for OFDM is 512. In HS PLC, CP is also used as in the other PLC
technologies and 128 samples are assigned. At both ends of symbols, there are RIs of 16 samples.
For the pulse shaping, raised-cosine windowing is used as in the other PLC technologies. The sampling
frequency f s is 50 MHz. The OFDM symbol period is 624 samples long, which corresponds to 12.48 µs.

3. Bit Rate and Power Spectrum Comparisons

The operating modes and data protection methods of the PLC technologies are summarized in
Table 1. HPGP and HS PLC each have three operating modes, and each mode has its own diversity
number. However, IoT PLC has Mini DF and Normal DF, and Normal DF has 15 different diversity
numbers, enabling very flexible operations. In Normal DF mode of IoT PLC, the diversity number is
determined by the diversity field setting in the physical layer (PHY) header. The diversity number
of 15 of IoT PLC is the largest of the three PLC technologies, and provides powerful error correcting
capabilities.
CTC is known to have very strong error correcting capability against random errors. Thus, it is
necessary to change burst errors that usually occur in the PLC channel into random ones. This is why
IoT PLC and HPGP use interleavers for all modes. HS PLC uses an interleaver in NORMAL mode
only. The size of NBPS depends on the TM determined by the channel conditions. DV and EDV modes
do not use an interleaver.
As mentioned above, IoT PLC and HPGP use a rate 1/2 CTC for FEC. However, their constituent
encoders are different. HS PLC uses a concatenated code of RS and convolutional code or RS code alone
depending on the operation mode. Theses codes have relatively weak error correction capabilities
compared to CTC.

Table 1. Operation modes and data protection schemes.

IoT PLC HPGP HS PLC

Mode Normal DF Mini DF STD HS MINI NORMAL EDV DV
DVn 1–15 16 4 2 5 1 5 12
Interleaver two of two of two of
720 × 8 24 × 8 NBPS × 16 - -
size (1040 × 4) (1040 × 4) (272 × 4)
rate 1/2 rate 1/2 rate 1/2 rate 1/2 rate 1/2 (255,239) RS
FEC (56,40) RS (20,12) RS
CTC CTC CTC CTC CTC + rate 1/2 CC

All three PLC technologies use the OFDM technique for transmission. The channel and OFDM
parameters are summarized in Table 2. The frequency bands used for IoT PLC and HPGP are 2 to
28 MHz. However, HS PLC uses a narrower frequency bands. In these frequency bands, bands used
by other wireless communications and regulated by emission laws can not be used. Therefore, the
number of usable subcarriers is smaller than half of the IFFT size. The sampling frequency f s and the
IFFT size determine the subcarrier spacing. HPGP has the smallest subcarrier spacing, and HS PLC
has the largest subcarrier spacing. The small value of the subcarrier spacing makes it easy to control
the PLC signal spectrum where allowed and forbidden bands are closely located. The signal spectrum
shape is also related to the RI value. The large RI value results in low out-of-band spectral components.
IoT PLC has the largest RI value and HS PLC has the smallest RI.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 9 of 21

Table 2. Channel and OFDM parameters.

IoT PLC HPGP HS PLC

Mode Normal DF Mini DF STD HS MINI NORMAL EDV DV
Freq. bands (MHz) 2–28 2–28 2–28 2–28 2–28 4–23 4–23 4–23
IFFT size 2560 2560 3072 3072 3072 512 512 512
Number of
800 800 916 916 915 152 152 124
subcarriers in use
f s (MHz) 62.5 62.5 75 75 75 50 50 50
Subcarrier
24.41 24.41 12.21 12.21 12.21 97.66 97.66 97.66
spacing (kHz)
Symbol period (µs) 56.32 56.32 46.52 46.52 48.52 12. 48 12.48 12.48
CP (µs) 15.10 15.10 10.52 10.52 12.52 2.56 2.56 2.56
CS (µs) 5.38 5.38 - - - - - -
RI (µs) 5.12 5.12 4.96 4.96 4.96 0.32 0.32 0.32
QPSK, 16QAM, DBPSK, DQPSK,
Modulation QPSK QPSK QPSK QPSK DBPSK DBPSK
π/4-DQPSK D8PSK

CP and CS increase the symbol period, and decrease the symbol rate. However, CP and CS serve
to reduce the influence of the ISI caused by the channel. IoT PLC has the largest CP and CS value
among the three PLC technologies. HS PLC has the smallest CP values. IoT PLC and HS PLC have the
same CP and CS values regardless of the operation modes, whereas HPGP has different CP values
depending on the operation modes. The MINI mode of HPGP has a larger CP value than the STD and
HS modes.
For modulations, HPGP uses coherent QPSK in all three modes. Coherent QPSK is also used
for Normal DF and Mini DF of IoT PLC. Normal DF also uses coherent 16QAM and noncoherent
π/4-DQPSK. HS PLC uses noncoherent modulation methods. In NORMAL mode, DBPSK, DQPSK,
or D8PSK is used depending on the channel conditions. Information about the used subcarrier
modulations is transmitted in the form of TM. D8PSK can transmit 3 bits per subcarrier, but it is more
susceptible to noise than DBPSK and DQPSK. DV and EDV modes use DBPSK, which is the most
robust against noise and distortions among the three differential modulations.
For IoT PLC, the transmission rate is given as follows.

1 0 1 4N
R IoT = × Ntone × Nbpt × R FEC × × (bps), (2)
Ts DVn 4N + Npad
where Ts and R FEC represent the symbol period and rate of the FEC, respectively. The results for the
0
transmission rate are shown in Table 3. In IoT PLC, R FEC = 1/2. The values of Ntone and Npad depend
0
on Ntone and DVn . Although Ntone is not equal to Ntone , the difference between the two values is small.
In addition, the number of padding bits, Npad , is not large compared to 4N. Thus, Equation (2) can be
approximated as follows.

1 1
R= × Ntone × Nbpt × R FEC × (bps). (3)
Ts DVn
Note that the values of Ts , Ntone , Nbpt , andDVn are found in the specifications. Thus, with Equation (3),
the transmission rate can be easily obtained. In addition, Equation (3) can also be applied to obtain the
transmission rate for HPGP and HS PLC.
The results for transmission rate obtained by Equation (2) at each DVn are given Figure 9 when
Ntone = 800 and N = 1440. In this figure, the results with Equation (3) are also provided for comparison.
Nbpt can be 2 or 4 for IoT PLC. In Figure 9, the approximated results agree well with the results from
Equation (2) except for the cases of small DVn . Specifically, when Nbpt = 2 and DVn ≥ 3 , the difference
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 10 of 21

due to the approximation is almost negligible. When Nbpt = 4 and DVn ≥ 5, the difference due to the
approximation is also almost negligible.

Table 3. Transmission rate for IoT PLC (Mbps).

DVn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Rate, Nbpt = 2 12.784 6.392 4.649 3.409 2.841 2.324 1.967 1.763
Rate, Nbpt = 4 25.568 12.784 8.523 6.392 5.682 4.649 3.934 3.409
DVn 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Mini DF
Rate, Nbpt = 2 1.550 1.421 1.278 1.162 1.065 1.003 0.930 0.852
Rate, Nbpt = 4 3.008 2.841 2.557 2.324 2.131 1.967 1.826 -

30
IoT PLC, N bpt = 2
IoT PLC, N bpt = 2, approx.
25
IoT PLC, N bpt = 4
IoT PLC, N bpt = 4, approx.
20 HPGP
HPGP, approx.
Rate (Mbps)

HS PLC

15

10

0
0 5 10 15
DVn

Figure 9. Transmission rate of IoT PLC according to diversity numbers.

For HPGP, Nbpt = 2 and R FEC = 1/2, regardless of the operating modes. The symbol period Ts
and the number of subcarriers in use Ntone are shown in Table 2. The diversity number is shown in
Table 1. Padding bits are also used in HPGP. Using Equation (2), the transmission rates are obtained
and are shown in Table 4. The approximate transmission rates using Equation (3) are also obtained
and shown in parentheses. The results of the transmission rates are shown in Figure 9 for comparison.

Table 4. Transmission rate for HPGP and HS PLC (Mbps).

HPGP HS PLC
Mode STD HS MINI NORMAL EDV DV
Rate 4.707 (4.923) 8.942 (9.845) 3.737 (3.772) ≤25.684 1.603 0.481

In the NORMAL mode of HS PLC, the transmission rate varies according to the TM and the
rate of the FEC, which can be set by the software or operator. We choose the maximum value
of R FEC for convenience, which is equal to (239/255) × (3/4). In addition, Nbpt changes with the
modulation method determined by the TM. Likewise, we choose the maximum value of 3 for Nbpt .
Thus, the transmission rate obtained for the NORMAL mode is the maximum that the mode can achieve.
For EDV and DV modes, 40 information bytes and 12 bytes are transmitted by 16 OFDM symbols,
respectively. Using the values in Tables 1 and 2, the transmission rates are obtained by Equation (2).
The transmission rates for HS PLC are shown in Table 4. The transmission rate for NORMAL mode,
25.684 Mbps, is the maximum rate, when assuming that D8PSK is used for each subcarrier, and the
rate 3/4 CC is employed for the FEC. When the rate 1/2 CC is used for the FEC, the transmission rate
decreases to 17.123 Mbps. For the modes of DV and EDV, the values are the actual transmission rates
of the physical layer. These transmission rates for HS PLC are also shown in Figure 9.
There are several methods to numerically estimate the power spectrum or power spectral density,
such as periodograms and Welch’s method. Welch’s method is known to reduce the noise in the
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 11 of 21

estimated power spectra which is noticeable in a periodogram [33]. We estimate the power spectrum
of the transmitted PLC signals by Welch’s method.
The number of samples used to obtain the spectrum is about 1 million. Figure 10a shows the
power spectrum of the IoT PLC signal. The horizontal axis ranges from 0 to half of the sampling
frequency. The signal is designed to occupy the frequency band of 2–28 MHz. However, in the band,
there are forbidden ranges due to the use of wireless communication such as short-wave radio and
amateur radio. As in other countries around the world, the radiation levels for each frequency band
are strictly regulated by law in Korea. In Figure 10a, the notches are located in the forbidden bands
and are very deep. The power at band edges is about 70 dB lower.
Figure 10b,c shows the spectrum results for HPGP and HS PLC, respectively. The frequency
range is from 0 to f s /2, which corresponds to 37.5 and 25 MHz for HPGP and HS PLC, respectively.
The frequency bands for HPGP and HS PLC are 2–28 and 4–24 MHz, respectively. In the computer
experiment, the subcarrier masks in the standards [6,7,9] are applied, and the power of the transmitted
signals for the three PLC technologies is made to be equal. Since the bandwidth of HS PLC is narrower
than the others, the power spectrum level is higher. The spectrum notches in HS PLC is very shallow
compared to those of the others. The notches are only about 20–25 dB deep because the RI value of HS
PLC is short. Since the power at the band edges is observed only about 30 dB lower, an additional
analog filter is needed to control the sidelobe power. In HPGP, the notch depth is about 30–40 dB and
the power at band edges is about 40 dB lower. Thus, HPGP has better power spectrum properties than
HS PLC in terms of the notch depth and out-of-band power. IoT PLC has better spectral properties
than HPGP since IoT PLC has deeper notches and lower out-of-band power than HPGP.

-20

-30

-40
Power spectral density (dB/Hz)

-50

-60

-70

-80

-90

-100

-110

-120
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Frequency (MHz)

(a)
-20 -20

-30 -30

-40 -40
Power spectral density (dB/Hz)

Power spectral density (dB/Hz)

-50 -50

-60 -60

-70 -70

-80 -80

-90 -90

-100 -100

-110 -110

-120 -120
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 5 10 15 20 25
Frequency (MHz) Frequency (MHz)

(b) (c)

Figure 10. Power spectrum: (a) IoT PLC; (b) HPGP; and (c) HS PLC.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 12 of 21

4. BER Comparisons and Discussion

4.1. Computer Simulation Blocks

The communication reliability for the PLC physical layer is investigated in terms of BER. Figure 11
shows the computer simulation block diagram for BER measurement. Randomly generated bits are
processed at the transmitter, and the output OFDM signal of the transmitter enters the PLC channel.
The channel output corrupted by noise is input to the receiver. The receiver specifications for the three
PLC technologies are not given in the standards. Thus, the algorithm used for each PLC receiver is
designed to achieve the best performance possible. In this context, impulsive noise is not included since
our purpose is to obtain the upper performance bound for each PLC. For background noise, colored
noise is known to reflect the noise of the PLC environment better. However, AWGN is also considered
useful when comparing the upper performance bound of the PLC technologies. Thus, for the noise,
AWGN is used in the simulation. The performance comparisons are based on the upper limit of the
performance that each PLC specification can achieve.
The IoT PLC receiver in Figure 11 consists of several functional blocks. In this paper, it is assumed
that symbol and carrier synchronization between the transmitter and the receiver is perfect. That is, there
is no timing error and no carrier frequency error at the receiver. CP and CS are removed from the received
signal, which is then converted to the frequency domain by FFT. There are pilot symbols or pilot carriers
in the transmitted signal to help channel estimation. Algorithms to estimate the channel response from the
pilot tones have been described, and each algorithm has pros and cons [34]. Since our goal is to evaluate
the upper limit of the BER performance, we assume a perfect channel and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
estimation. The channel response is used to equalize each distorted subcarrier signal by a frequency
domain one-tap equalizer using the minimum mean square error (MMSE) algorithm.
The equalized subcarrier signals are demodulated. The demodulator produces soft decision
values since CTC decoding uses soft decision inputs. The demodulated in-phase or quadrature
components are combined by the diversity demapper. The combined values are sent to the channel
deinterleaver and subblock deinterleaver, which function as an inverse channel interleaver and
subblock deinterleaver, respectively.

Figure 11. Simulation block diagram for BER measurements.

For CTC decoding, several methods are described in the literature [35–37]. Maximum a posteriori
(MAP) or log-MAP, which is the log-domain implementation of the MAP, is the optimal decoding
algorithm. Log-MAP provides less computational burden than MAP, but the complexity is still high.
The max-log-MAP algorithm with a correction term has viable complexity and provides equivalent
performance to the log-MAP. Thus, the max-log-MAP with a correction term is used for CTC decoding.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 13 of 21

This algorithm is also used when the performance of HPGP is evaluated. Finally, the decoded bit
stream is compared to the input bit stream and the BER is computed.

4.2. Channel Model

The broadband channel model in [18] is described briefly. The frequency response of the channel
is as follows.
K
H( f ) = ∑ gk · A( f , dk ) · e− j2π f (dk /v p ) , (4)
k =1

where gk is a weighting factor and A( f , dk ) is an attenuation. The last portion e− j2π f (dk /v p ) represents
delay, where dk and v p are the length of the kth path and the propagation speed on the transmission
line, respectively. K represents the number of signal paths between the transmitter and receiver.
The attenuation A( f , dk ) and the parameters gk and dk are obtained from field measurements.
When a power line has one tap and the number of signal paths is 4, the attenuation and
the parameters are obtained in [18]. The magnitude response of this model with the attenuation
and parameters is shown in Figure 12a. This model covers all substantial effects of the transfer
characteristics in the frequency range from 500 kHz to 20 MHz. However, observing that the attenuation
decreases as the frequency increase in the range above 20 MHz, it is believed that this model can be
used up to 28 MHz without loss of generality.
For the simulation, the frequency response is cut to the range of half the sampling frequency of
IoT PLC and sampled with the frequency resolution of subcarrier spacing. Then, the discrete impulse
response obtained from the sampled channel frequency response is convolved with the sampled IoT
PLC signal to produce the channel output. This method also applies to HPGP and HS PLC. Since their
sampling frequency and subcarrier spacing are different, each discrete channel impulse response is
obtained accordingly. The discrete impulse response for IoT PLC is shown in Figure 12b as an example.

0 0.14

0.12
-10

0.1
Channel impuse response

-20
0.08
|H(f)| (dB)

-30 0.06

-40 0.04

0.02
-50
0

-60
-0.02

-70 -0.04
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500
Frequency (MHz) Sample number

(a) (b)

Figure 12. PLC channel: (a) magnitude frequency response of the channel; and (b) channel impulse
response for IoT PLC.

4.3. Simulation Results and Discussion

The CTC decoder decodes the input block by an iterative algorithm. The CTC decoder has two
soft-input soft-output (SISO) decoders, which compute a posteriori log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for
information bits. With soft-decision inputs and a priori LLR of information bits, a SISO decoder also
produces an extrinsic information. The extrinsic information is provided to the other SISO decoder
as an updated a priori LLR. This process is done iteratively. As the iteration continues, a posteriori
LLR values become more reliable with the updated a priori LLRs. Detailed descriptions of the iterative
decoding algorithm are given in [35–37]. After each iteration, errors in the decoded bits are reduced.
The BER results for IoT PLC with QPSK modulation are shown in Figure 13. The number of information
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 14 of 21

bits for subblocks A and B used in the simulation is about 106 . The diversity number DVn of IoT PLC
is 1–15 . The SNR in dB is defined as 10log10 (S p /Np ), where S p and Np are the signal power and noise
power at the receiver, respectively. In Figure 13, the results for diversity numbers of 3 and 15 are shown
as examples. In the figures, the BER value decreases as the number of iterations increases. In the
second iteration, the BER performance is greatly improved. However, the BER improvement becomes
saturated when the iterations are large. The difference between the BER results at Iterations 6 and 8 is
very small. In addition, the BER drops rapidly when SNR ≥ −5 dB and DVn = 3. However, when DVn
increases to 15, the rapid fall of the BER begins at a much lower SNR of −13.5 dB. When DVn = 3 and
15, the required SNR to obtain 10−3 for the BER is −3.3 dB and −12.8 dB at six iterations, respectively.

QPSK, DVn =3 QPSK, DVn =15

10 0 10 0
Iteration:1 Iteration:1
iteration: 2 iteration: 2
iteration: 4 iteration: 4
10 -1 iteration: 6 10 -1 iteration: 6
iteration: 8 iteration: 8

10 -2 10 -2
BER

BER
10 -3 10 -3

10 -4 10 -4

10 -5 10 -5
-7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 -15 -14 -13 -12 -11 -10 -9
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

(a) (b)

Figure 13. BER results for IoT PLC with QPSK modulation: (a) DVn = 3; and (b) DVn = 15.

The BER results for IoT PLC with 16QAM modulation are shown in Figure 14. The shape of this
figure is similar to that of Figure 13. However, the beginning SNR for a rapid BER fall is very large.
For example, the BER drops rapidly when SNR ≥ 5 dB and DVn = 3. When DVn = 15, the BER shows
rapid fall at SNR ≥ −5.5 dB. In addition, as DVn increases, the slopes of the falling portion of the
curves are steeper, which is also seen in Figure 13.

16QAM, DV n =3 16QAM, DV n =15

10 0 10 0
Iteration:1 Iteration:1
iteration: 2 iteration: 2
iteration: 4 iteration: 4
10 -1 iteration: 6 10 -1 iteration: 6
iteration: 8 iteration: 8

10 -2 10 -2
BER

BER

10 -3 10 -3

10 -4 10 -4

10 -5 10 -5
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

(a) (b)

Figure 14. BER results for IoT PLC with 16QAM modulation: (a) DVn = 3; and (b) DVn = 15.

The BER results for IoT PLC with π/4-DQPSK modulation are shown in Figure 15.
For π/4-DQPSK mode, noncoherent detection is used. The channel equalizer is not applied for this
mode. The differential detection is performed with symbols adjacent in time in the same subchannel.
On static or slowly changing channels, distortions caused by the channel can be compensated with
differential detection. When DVn = 3, an irreducible error floor is observed. The subchannel located at
the deep notch of the channel has unrecoverable bit errors. If the diversity number is not large, the bit
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 15 of 21

copies are not spread enough to be corrected, which results in error floor. When DVn = 15, the error
floor is not present and the BER decreases rapidly as the SNR increases owing to the rich diversity.
With the channel used in the simulation, the error floor is not observed in the range down to 10−5
when DVn ≥ 4.

π/4-DQPSK, DV n =3 π/4-DQPSK, DV n =15

10 0 10 0
Iteration:1 Iteration:1
iteration: 2 iteration: 2
iteration: 4 iteration: 4
-1 -1
10 iteration: 6 10 iteration: 6
iteration: 8 iteration: 8

10 -2 10 -2
BER

BER
10 -3 10 -3

10 -4 10 -4

10 -5 10 -5
-2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

(a) (b)

Figure 15. BER results for IoT PLC with π/4-DQPSK modulation: (a) DVn = 3; and (b) DVn = 15.

Next, the BER results for Mini DF are shown in Figure 16. In Mini DF mode, QPSK modulation is
used and the block size is N = 48. Since the block size is smaller than that of DF, the BER shows a
relatively slow decrease with increasing SNR, which is commonly observed in systems with CTC of
small processing blocks. However, for Mini DF mode with many copies of coded bits (16 copies), the
BER begins to fall at a low SNR of −14 dB. The required SNR to obtain 10−3 for the BER is −11.7 dB at
six iterations.

Mini DF
10 0
Iteration:1
iteration: 2
iteration: 4
10 -1 iteration: 6
iteration: 8

10 -2
BER

10 -3

10 -4

10 -5
-16 -15 -14 -13 -12 -11 -10
SNR (dB)

Figure 16. BER results for Mini DF.

Next, the performance change according to the diversity number at each modulation is
investigated. The BER results for the whole values of DVn are shown in Figure 17, where the iteration
number is set to 6. The BER performance improves as DVn increases. In Figure 17a, to obtain a BER of
10−3 in QPSK mode, an SNR of 0.3 dB is required with DVn = 2 and an SNR of −3.3 dB with DVn = 3.
Thus, an SNR improvement of 3.6 dB is obtained owing to the diversity number increasing from 2
to 3. However, the performance improvement obtained from the diversity becomes small when the
diversity number becomes large. For example, when the diversity number increases from 9 to 10, an
SNR improvement of 0.4 dB is obtained. The other modulations, 16QAM and π/4-DQPSK, show a
similar trend.
Figure 17b shows the BER results for 16QAM mode. The BER hardly decrease even with a large
SNR when DVn = 1. However, when DVn ≥ 2, the BER decreases rapidly as the SNR increases.
Without diversity, a bit may be not recovered even at a high SNR due to a deep notch in the channel,
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 16 of 21

but in the presence of diversity, copies of the bit can make the bit correctable. At BER=10−3 , an SNR
improvement of 2.95 dB is obtained with a DVn increase from 2 to 3. When DVn increases form 9
to 10, an SNR improvement of 0.31 dB is observed at BER=10−3 . In Figure 17c, the BER results for
π/4-DQPSK mode are shown. Comparing the BER performance of π/4-DQPSK mode with that of the
other modes at every DVn , the BER performance of π/4-DQPSK is better than that of 16QAM but is
worse than that of QPSK.

QPSK, iteration=6
10 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

10 -1
BER

10 -2

10 -3
-15 -10 -5 0 5 10
SNR (dB)

(a)

16QAM, iteration=6
10 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

10 -1
BER

10 -2

10 -3
-6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
SNR (dB)

(b)

π/4-DQPSK, iteration=6
10 0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

10 -1
BER

10 -2

10 -3
-5 0 5 10 15
SNR (dB)

(c)

Figure 17. BER results of IoT PLC for the whole DVn : (a) QPSK mode; (b) 16QAM mode; and
(c) π/4-DQPSK mode.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 17 of 21

HPGP uses CTC for the FEC. Thus, iterative decoding is used as in IoT PLC. Figure 18 shows the
BER results for HPGP. BER values are given at Interations 2, 4, 6, and 8. As the iterations increase,
the BER difference between iterations decreases. The block size for STD and HS modes is 2080, while
the block size of MINI mode is 544. The falling slope of the BER curve in Figure 18a is less steep than
those in the other modes, because the block size at the MINI mode is smaller. The STD mode makes
four copies for the coded bits while HS makes two copies. Thus, the STD mode outperforms the HS
mode in terms of the BER. At a BER of 10−3 , the STD mode requires an SNR of −5.7 dB while the HS
mode requires 1.3 dB. The MINI mode has the most copies for the coded bits, but the BER performance
at high SNR is not better than the STD mode because of the small input block size.

HPGP, MINI mode

10 0
iteration: 2
iteration: 4
iteration: 6
10 -1 iteration: 8

10 -2
BER

10 -3

10 -4

10 -5
-9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3
SNR (dB)

(a)
HPGP, STD mode HPGP, HS mode
10 0 10 0
iteration: 2 iteration: 2
iteration: 4 iteration: 4
iteration: 6 iteration: 6
10 -1 iteration: 8 10 -1 iteration: 8

10 -2 10 -2
BER

BER

10 -3 10 -3

10 -4 10 -4

10 -5 10 -5
-9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4
SNR (dB) SNR (dB)

(b) (c)

Figure 18. BER results for HPGP: (a) MINI mode; (b) STD mode; and (c) HS mode.

The BER results for HS PLC are shown in Figure 19. For the performance evaluation of HS PLC,
the best and worst modes in terms of the BER are considered. The FEC in HS PLC does not use iterative
decoding. Figure 19a shows the BER results for the NORMAL mode. An error floor is present and
the BER does not fall below 0.02 in the NORMAL mode. There is no diversity in the NORMAL mode.
In the DV mode, the BER decreases as the SNR increases due to the high diversity of 12 at the expense
of the transmission rate, but the falling slope of the BER is not as rapid as that of IoT PLC or HPGP,
which uses CTC for FEC.
In Figure 20, the BER performance of HS PLC and HPGP are shown for comparison. The STD
mode of HPGP has the best performance at BER = 10−3 , followed by the MINI mode, the DV mode of
HS PLC, and the HS mode of HPGP. In terms of the BER, the NORMAL mode of HS PLC shows the
worst performance. The BER curves of HPGP are steeper than those of HS PLC. Thus, the difference
between the BER values of the MINI mode of HPGP and the DV mode of HS PLC becomes larger as
the SNR increases.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 18 of 21

HS PLC, NORM mode HS PLC, DV mode

10 0 10 0

10 -1 10 -1

10 -2 10 -2
BER

BER
10 -3 10 -3

10 -4 10 -4

10 -5 10 -5
8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 -9 -8.5 -8 -7.5 -7 -6.5 -6 -5.5 -5 -4.5 -4
SNR (dB) SNR(dB)

(a) (b)

Figure 19. BER results for HS PLC: (a) NORMAL mode; and (b) DV mode.
HPGP with iteration=6, and HS PLC
10 0

10 -1
BER

10 -2
HPGP, HS
HPGP, STD
HPGP, MINI
HS PLC, NORM
HS PLC, DV

10 -3
-8 -6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
SNR (dB)

Figure 20. BER results of HPGP and HS PLC.

Now, performance comparisons of the three PLC technologies are provided. Since there are many
modes of PLC technologies to compare, a plot would be very complex and difficult to read if all the
BER curves for all the modes were shown in the same plot. Instead of comparing all the BER curves,
the SNR value required to obtain a target BER at each mode of the PLC is compared. In Figure 21,
the SNR values required to obtain a BER of 10−3 are shown for all modes of the PLC technologies.
The horizontal axis is the diversity number (the number of copies for the coded bits) and the vertical
axis represents the required SNR. Therefore, a lower point means better BER performance. The three
dotted lines represent the results for IoT PLC. IoT PLC in QPSK mode has better BER performance
than any other PLC technologies at each diversity number. The QPSK mode of IoT PLC with DVn = 15
is the best in terms of the BER performance. The Mini DF of IoT PLC has an SNR value similar to the
QPSK mode with DVn = 11, but this SNR value cannot be achieved with the other PLC technologies.
On the other hand, the STD mode of HPGP outperforms the other two modes of HPGP and
provides similar performance to the QPSK mode of IoT PLC with DVn = 4. The HS mode of HPGP
has a slightly worse performance than the QPSK mode of IoT PLC with DVn = 2. The DV mode of HS
PLC has worse performance than π/4-DQPSK mode with DVn = 12 and has similar performance to
π/4-DQPSK mode with DVn = 9. The performance of the DV mode of HS PLC is worse than that of
the STD and MINI mode of HPGP. However, the DV mode of HS PLC has better performance than
the HS mode of HPGP. The NORMAL mode of HS PLC does not appear in this figure since it cannot
achieve a BER of 10−3 on the PLC channel. This also applies to the 16QAM mode of IoT PLC with
DVn = 1.
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10, 3306 19 of 21

SNR required for BER = 10 -3

20
IoT, QPSK
IoT, π /4-DQPSK
15
IoT, 16QAM
IoT, Mini DF
HPGP, HS
10
HPGP, STD
HPGP, MINI
HS PLC, DV

SNR (dB)
5

-5

-10

-15
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Diversity number

Figure 21. Comparisons of SNR required for BER of 10−3 .

5. Conclusions
This study compared the physical layer performance of broadband PLC technologies being
deployed or tested in Korea. The PLC technologies included IoT PLC, HPGP, and HS PLC. The bit
rate, power spectrum, and BER were evaluated. For the transmission rate, an expression for the bit
rate for IoT PLC and HPGP was derived while taking the padding bits and the number of tones in use
into consideration. The expression was compared with an approximate formula. IoT PLC provides 31
different bit rates ranging from 0.930 to 25.568 Mbps. HPGP and HS PLC each provides three different
bit rates. The power spectrum was obtained through computer simulations. IoT PLC was found to
have good power spectrum properties in terms of the notch depth and out-of-band power. For the BER
performance comparisons, the upper bound of the BER for each PLC standard was evaluated through
computer simulations. From the results, the STD mode of HPGP provides similar performance to the
QPSK mode of IoT PLC with a diversity number of 4. Finally, we observed that IoT PLC in QPSK
mode has better BER performance than any other PLC technologies at each diversity number.

Funding: This research was supported by a grant from the Korea Energy Efficiency Cooperative.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the
study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to
publish the results.

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