Cooperative relaying in narrow-band PLC networks using fountain codes

Low voltage narrow band (NB) power-line communications (PLC) for future smart grid networks are considered in this paper. We investigate a cooperative communication scheme, where both transmissions from the source to the relays and from the relays to the destination use fountain codes. Because of the broadcast property of the PLC channel, intermediate nodes between the source and the destination can overhear any encoded packets. The key idea is to permit intermediate nodes to assist the source in the transmission. In agreement with the earlier investigations on NB PLC, the channel between each node on the PLC bus is modeled based on the bottom-up approach. The channel is modeled as a packet erasure channel (the standard PRIME is used as an example of NB-PLC). We provide analytical evaluation of the detection probability at the destination as a function of the channel usage and for different number of relays. We show and quantify the advantage of using relay combined with fountain codes in PLC networks.