Cognitive spectrum shaping for InHome Power Line Communications

Power Line Communications (PLC) are one of the most recent technologies proposed to allow the InHome Internet access, in competition with different Wireless Standards as Wi-Fi. The advantages offered by PLC deal with network availability since each modem connected to the plug is able, in principle, to access the Internet while in the Wi-Fi scenario, the propagation environment strongly influences the received signal strength and consequently connection performance. The conventional approach followed in planning the physical layer of PLC systems, like for example in HomePlug solution, is based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), able to combat the frequency selective nature of the channel frequency response. However, OFDM presents some drawbacks as, for example, Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) while a different approach based on constrained signal shaping (single carrier) can solve these problems. In this direction, this work shows a frequency shaping approach where the frequency occupancy is minimized through constraints on spectral emission and link quality level.