Improving data rate in relay-aided power line communications using network coding

Power line communication (PLC) provides a reliable and inexpensive solution to enable high data rate services for indoor environments. In this work, we consider an indoor PLC network where several devices (or users) want to exchange data. To prevent severe signal attenuation and thus performance degradation over relatively long PLC links, we consider the use of a relay at a central location to assist the users in their data communication. For this scenario, we suggest the application of amplify-and-forward (AF) multi-way relaying (MWR) based on physical-layer network coding at the relay. To evaluate the performance of this scheme, its achievable data rate is studied with practical assumptions applicable to PLC systems. Our study shows that the employed AF MWR improves the system performance and increases the achievable common data rate at the users.