Measurement and simulation framework for throughput evaluation of narrowband power line communication links in low-voltage grids

High-data-rate narrowband Power Line Communication (PLC) is a prominent candidate for smart grid communications in the low-voltage grid at low operational costs. However, the power-line channel is fairly harsh in terms of time-variance, frequency selectivity, and observable impulsive and narrowband noise sources. These unpredictable phenomena motivate selective measurement campaigns in addition to common channel modeling. While previously published measurement studies were fairly limited in duration, we report on a measurement setup for capturing power-line channels over weeks and show measurement results highlighting day-dependent channel effects on selected communication links. Furthermore, previous performance simulations are typically based on simplified channel models and limited in terms of the detail level at the physical layer or lack a consideration of higher-layer protocol overhead. We present a novel simulation methodology which is based on detailed physical-layer simulations exploiting measured, time-varying channel data, and incorporates protocol overhead models for transport-layer throughput estimation. Exemplary simulation results include the newest, commercially available narrowband PLC standards in their latest version, that is ITU-T G.9903 (“G3”) and G.9904 (“PRIME”), as well as IEEE 1901.2.