DMT-based Power Line Communication for the CENELEC

A-band
Frederik PetrG* Marc Engels Bert Gyselinckx Hugo DeMant
Interuniversity Micro Electronics Centre (IMEC). Kapeldreef 75,3001 Heverlee - Belgium
tel. +32-16-281406 fax. +32-16-281515
email : petre@imec.be

Witlz the deregulation of the telecorn market, the power distribution network has become an interesting alter-
native for already existing access networks. However; recently proposed transmission schenzes for power lines
are not designed for tlze high data rates required for multiirzedia transmission. We propose Discrete Multi Tone
(DMT)as a means to obtain high data rates in the CENELEC A-band (9-95kHz). A key element of such a system
is tlze bitloading strategy. Front the different loading algorithins we selected the rate-adaptive loading algorithin
proposed by Leke et al. [ I I], which maxiinizes the bitratefor@ed bit error rate and a given power constraint, and
extended it to derive a discrete bit distribution. This allowed us to derive upper boundsfor the bitrate pellformance
of a DMT transnzissiort system. Siinulations indicate that bitrates above 1 Mb/s are feasible for distances below
1000 m using a transmit power of several tens of Watt. Pe$ori?zance degrades to several hundreds of kb/s when
transmit power is reduced to 100 mW

1 Introduction
Power line communications is a topic which has been studied for many years. Up till now, its most important
applications were load management, remote meter reading, home automation, intelligent buildings and local area
networks [I]. With the deregulation of the telecom market, the power distribution network can also be used as
an access network besides already existing ones like the telephone access network or the CATV access network.
Digital customer services like electronic banking, e-mail, internet access and digital atldio and video broadcast
should become feasible in the near future, using the power network as a communication channel.
However, recently proposed transmission schemes for power networks are not designed for the high data rates
required for multimedia transmission. Dostert describes in [2] his results with frequency-hoppingspread-spectrum.
For outdoor communications he reports a data rate of 60 bitsls and a frequency hop rate of 300 Hz using a spectral
range from 30 to 146 kHz. The bit error rate is in the order of In [3] Waldeck proposes an improved
frequency-hopping scheme with reduced constraints on the system clock. Hooijen deiigns in [4] a system that
combines both frequency-hoppingand direct-sequencespread-spectrumtechniques. In [5] Tuite exploits the larger
bandwidth (10-450 kHz), available in the United States and Japan, to report data rates of 19.2 kbls with a bit
error rate of using direct-sequence spread-spectrum. In order to support higher data rates, other modulation
schemes a e required.
Based on Hooijen's channel model [6] we propose Discrete Multi Tone (DMT) [7] as a means to obtain high
data rates in the CENELEC A-band (9-95 kHz). The concept of multitone transmission has attracted a lot of
interest recently as a means to increase the data rate on a channel under given requirements such as fixed transmitter
power budget and equal probability of error on all subchannels. DMT is the most common form of Multicarrier
Modulation (MCM) and assigns a number of bits to each subchannel according to the subchannel signal-to-noise
ratios. The scheme which assigns the energy and the bits to the different subchannels is called a loading algorithm.
The organization of this paper is as follows. The next section discusses the major impairments of the power
line channel for the CENELEC A-band and derives the channel model we used for simulations. Section 3 presents
the structure of a DMT system and section 4 describes the loading algorithm we implemented. Simulation results
are discussed in section 5. Finally, section 6 summarizes the most important conclusions and gives a view on future
work.
* This work was supported by a KUL-scholarship
t Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
2 Channel model
Based on an'extensive measurement campaign in the city of Amsterdam, Hooijen [6] was able to derive a channel
model for the residential power distribution network. Figure 1 shows the residential power circuit (RPC) which
basically comprises everything attached to the secondary side of the distribution transformer. Hooijen measured
the channel parameters of interest in the frequency-band from 9 to 95 kHz (CENELEC A-band), the frequency-
band in which communications by the electricy providers is allowed. For our simulations we used a simplified
version of Hooijen's channel model, since our primary aim was to derive upper bounds for the bitrate performance
of a DMT system. In the following we give an overview of this model and we point out the gimplifications we
made.

HighlMedium
Voltage
Transformer

Figure 1: Residential Power Circuit

The two major contributions to the attenuation on the RPC are the coupling loss and the line loss. The coupling
loss is caused by the interaction between the coupling network and the RPC impedance. As a first approximation
we neglect this coupling loss by assuming the transmitter's output impedance to be zero. The line loss is approx-
imately frequency- and time-independant for a given location. The attenuation increases as the distance between
the transmitter-receiver pair increases, with 40 to 100 dB1km. The previous conclusions are summarized by the
following equation for the channel transfer function :

with a [m-l]varying between 0.004 (best case) and 0.01 (worst case).
The noise on the RPC can be considered to be a summation of four noise types :
Background noise is the portion of the noise that remains when subtracting the other three noise types
from the total noise measured at a certain location. The background noise power decreases with increasing
frequehcies and is described by [6] :

where K is normally distributed with average -8.64 and standard deviation 0.5.
Single event impulse noise is primarily caused by switching transients and can be modeled as impulses,
which last for a very small fraction of time (typically less than 100 ps). The impulse amplitudes typically
lie more than 10 dB above the average background noise level with peaks of 40 dB.
Noise syrzchronous to the power system frequency is mainly produced by silicon controlled rectifiers, found
e.g. in light dimmers. In the time domain, this noise type shows itself as a train of noise impulses, arriving
every l/(k. fnet) seconds, with k usually 1 or 2. The spectrum of this noise consists of a series of harmonics
of the k . fnet fundamental component.

59
 7 Filter

Noise
Filter

WGN
10 20 30 40 50 80 70 80 80
I
Figure 2: Simplified channel model for CENELEC A- Fre~uency(Wz)

band
Figure 3: Best and worst case noise psd

Narrowband noise is confined to a narrow portion of the frequency band. It can appear at any frequency
within the CENELEC A-band, but most likely'at television related frequencies (i.e. 31, 47, 62, 78 and 94
kHz).
Our model only contains the background noise, which is the most important noise source.
Figure 2 summarizes our simplified channel model. The channel filter, described by equation 1, contains a
distance dependant attenuation. The noise filter transforms white gaussian noise into colored noise with the desired
power spectral density, described by equation 2. Figure 3 shows the noise psd for the best case, corresponding to
K = ,u - 2 . a, and for the worst case, corresponding to I( = ,u 2 - u. +

3 Discrete Multi Tone modulation

In this section we provide some background on Discrete Multi Tone (DMT) and point out the advantages of
adaptive bitloading. In DMT the total bandwidth is divided into N parallel subchannels. These subchannels are
exactly independant and memoryless by using the basis vectors of the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) as the
subchannel carriers and adding a cyclic prefix to each symbol. This cyclic prefix is used to combat intersymbol
interference and make the transmitted sequence look periodic. If the length of the channel impulse response is v + l ,
then the length of the cyclic prefix must be v. To eliminate intercarrier interference, the first v received samples in
each DMT block are discarded. Because each transmitted block must have a cyclic prefix to be transmitted over
any non-ideal channel, part of the available bandwidth and power budget is wasted by inclusion of the cyclic prefix.
Therefore, one goal in the design of a multicarrier system is to minimize the percentage of each block wasted by
transmitting the cyclic prefix. For any fixed channel impulse response, the percentage of each block lost to the
cyclic prefix decreases as the FFTIIFFT size (which is 2N) is increased. '
For slowly time-varying channels, channel state information can be used in the transmitter to 'load' the different
subchannels. Bits are assigned to subchannels in direct proportion to the subchannel signal-to-noise ratios. As a
result, subchannels that suffer from little attenuation andlor little noise carry the most bits, while subchannels that
are severely attenuated andlor very noisy might not carry any bits. The scheme which assigns the bits and the
energy to the different subchannels is called a loading algorithm.
Figure 4 shows a typical block diagram of a DMT transmitlreceive structure. The entire bandwidth is divided
into N parallel subchannels. An input bit stream of R bitsls is buffered into blocks of b = RT bits, where T is the
symbol period. The loading algorithm assigns a certain number of bits, b,, to each subchannel where

and N the number of subchannels. The encoder then translates the bits, b,,. into symbols, Xn, chosen from the
appropriate constellation. The time symbols, x,, are obtained by inverse Fourier transformation, and the cyclic
prefix is added to the beginning of the DMT symbol. Taking the Fourier transform of the received samples, after
discarding the cyclic prefix, one obtains N independant parallel subchannels which can be individually decoded
using a simple memoryless decoder for each subchannel.
'A 2N-point complex-to-red IFFT is required in the transmitter to ensure that the signd applied to the channel is real.
 Input bit I Xl ,k c . Xl,k .
.
stream
R bitsls b bit X2,k
buffer IFFT
X2,k ' PIS
and add DIA Lowpass
and
encoder
X~,k . '2N.k
cyclic
,prefix
Filter

-
:
. . N QAM . 2N time domain i
Channel .
symbols samples

Output bit

R hits/< n T .nwnacc

Figure 4: DMT transmitlreceive structure

We conclude that the loading algorithm is a key element in any DMT system. In the next section we discuss
the algorithm that we implemented in more detail.

4 Loading algorithm
Although the power line channel is not frequency-selective, the channel noise is colored with a power spectral
density which decreases as a function of frequency. Moreover, since the channel is rather slowly time-varying,
the receiver can provide reliable channel state information to the transmitter using a robust feedback channel.
Therefore, loading the different subchannels seems an interesting approach for increasing the capacity usage on
the channel.
The theoretical channel Capacity can be achieved by distributing the energy according to the waterfilling distri-
bution [8]. However, this distribution is difficult to compute since it assumes infinite granularity in both subchannel
bandwidth and constellation size. Different practical (but sub-optimal) loading algorithms have been proposed in
the ADSL-context. In general these can be classified into margin-adaptive and rate-adaptive loading algorithms.
Margin-adaptive loading algorithms [7, 9, 101 maximize the margin (or equivalently minimize the bit error rate)
for fixed bitrate and given power constraint. Rate-adaptive loading algorithms maximize the bitrate for fixed bit
error rate and given power constraint.
Since we want to derive upper bounds on the achievable bitrate performance of a DMT transmission system
on the power line channel, we have selected the rate-adaptive loading algorithm proposed by Leke et al. [ I 11. This
algorithm consists of five steps. The first step determines which channels should be turned off. From the discrete
waterfilling solution (which has finite granularity in channel bandwidth but still infinite granularity in constellation
size), a subchannel is turned off when the amount of energy to be assigned to it is negative. In the second step
the available energy is distributed among the remaining subchannels. One way of distributing the energy is by
using the discrete version of the waterfilling approach. The other way is by putting an equal amount of energy on
the subchannels which are turned on (flat energy distribution). The latter is simpler than the discrete waterfilling'
approach and only slightly suboptimal. The third step uses the obtained energy distribution to compute the number
of bits per subchannel. The bits are assigned according to the capacity of the subchannels :
SNRn
bn = log, ( 1 + -----I
r-^lm
where S N R , = E , . gn is the signal-to-noise ratio on subchannel n, en is the energy per information symbol,
gn is ,the channel attenuation-to-noise ratio and I? is the SNR gap, representing the difference between channel
capacity and the actual capacity usage of the transmission scheme. The SNR gap depends on the desired bit error
rate and the modulation and coding scheme used for transmission. Table 1 shows the SNR gaps for uncoded QAM
for some commonly used bit'error rates. The target system performance margin y, is defined as the amount of .
 Table 1: SNR gap for uncoded QAM
Pe 1 1
I? (dB) I 7,O 1 8,9 10,3

SNR-degradation the system can tolerate while still achieving the minimum desired bit error rate requirement.
At this point, the obtained bit distribution is still continuous in nature. We extended the algorithm with a fourth
step in order to derive a discrete bit distribution from the continuous one which still satisfies the given power
constraint. The number of bits b, is quantized to bQn with ,
bn 2 bmax - 0.5
0.5 5 b, < b,, - 0.5
b, < 0.5

and ROUND(x) denoting the rounding function. Since this new distribution will likely violate the given power
contraint, it has to be modified again in order to meet this constraint as close as possible. The total energy consumed
by the discrete distribution can be either larger or smaller than the budgeted energy. In the following we discuss
both cases in parallel. Therefore we compute the difference between the integer and the continuous bit distribution

Ab, = bQn - b,

Next we subtracttadd one bit fromlto the subchannel, which maximizeslminimizes A b , over all subchannels. This
results in a maximum gainlminimum loss of energy for one bit of information. By repeating this procedure until the
used energy is smaller than or equals the budgetted energy, one forces the distribution to meet the power constraint
while loosing a minimum number of bits. Finally, in the fifth step the energies on the different subchannels have
to be rescaled according to the final bit distribution in order to ensure that the total energy distributed equals the
budgeted energy. The total system margin is the initial margin times this scale factor.
The algorithm described above assumes perfect knowledge of the channel attenuation H ( n ) and noise power
No(n)on each subchannel. In a real system these quantities have to be estimated first. We accomplish this by send-
ing L times a QPSK-modulated pseudo-noise DMT-symbol over the channel [12]. Both the channel attenuation
and noise power estimation are based on these reference symbols. Let r(n) be the received signal on subchannel
n. The output of the demodulator (i.e. the FFT) for subchannel n is

provided the length of the cyclic prefix is chosen to be at least the length of the channel impulse response. H ( n )
stands for the complex channel attenuation (i.e. the nth tap of the FFT of the channel impulse response) and'N(n)
stands for the complex additive white Gaussian noise on subchannel n with power No(n).We deduce the channel
attenuation estimation ~ ( nfrom
) :
H ( n ) = avg {r(n) P N ( n )) (8)
which results into :
~ ( n=)H ( n ) + avg { N ( n ). P N ( n ) ) (9)
Here avg {.) stands for averaging over the L pseudo-noise DMT-symbols that were sent. The noise power estima-
. tion ~ ~ is( obtained
n ) in a similar manner :

fio(n) = avg {lr(n)- ~ ( n. ~) ~ ( n ) l ~ }

The mismatch between the actual values of channel attenuation and noise power and their estimates gives rise to
I
a degradation in SNR on each subchannel. Figure 5 shows the SNR degradation due to channel attenuation and
noise power estimation as a function of the number of training symbols used in the estimation process. We observe
I that for an SNR-degradation of 0.1 dB one needs 40 respectively 3200 training symbols.

5 , Simulation results for the powerline channel

In this section we present simulation results for a DMT-system based on the bitloading strategy developed in the
previous section. First, we consider the worst case scenario explained ih section 2 with a transmitter-receiver
distance of 500 m and a transmit power of 25 W. The DMT transmission scheme contains 32 tones (or subchannels

62
 Figure 5: SNR degradation versus number of training symbols

1 6
f
24
$06
W
!
22
0 0
Frequency (Hz) x lo' x lo'

Figure 6 : Initial and final energy distribution Figure 7: Initial and final bit distribution

or carriers) and operates with an SNR gap of 7,O dB (BER = The sampling frequency of the FFT is 208 kHz.
Figure 6a and 7a are the same and show which subchannels are turned on and which are turned off by the loading
algorithm. The subchannels which lie outside the bandwidth of interest are turned off from the beginning and get
,
an arbitrary value of 0.5 in order to distinguish them from the other subchannels. The initial energy distribution
in Figure 6b corresponds with the initial bit distribution in Figure 7b. The energy has been distributed according
to the discrete waterfilling method. The energy in the subchannels that were turned off has been reassigned to
other subchannels. One observes that the initial energy distribution has the inverse shape of the noise psd. The
final energy distribution in Figure 6c corresponds to the final bit distribution in Figure 7c. Whereas the initial bit
distribution has infinite granularity, the final bit distribution is quantized to an even integer. Subchannels carrying
less than one bit are also turned off, resulting in a few more unused carriers compared to the inital distribution. As
expected, the final energy distribution (i.e. after rescaling due to bit round-off) has the saw-tooth shape due to the
integer bit constellation constraint [9].
Simulation of the achievable bitrate versus the number of tones for discrete capacity (I? = 0 dB) and three
different bit error rates is shown in Figure 8. Now we consider the best case scenario. The distance between
transmitter and receiver is 500 m and the transmit power is 25 W. We observe that the bitrate for 128 tones already'
approaches' the bitrate for an infinite number of tones.
Figure 9 shows the bitrate as a function of transmit power for both the worst case and best case scenario.
For both cases the bitrate is plotted for discrete capacity and three different bit error rates. The distance between
transmitter and receiver is 500 m and the number of tones is 128. For the best case scenario, reasonable bitrates of
500 kbls can be achieved using a transmit power of 100 mW. However for the worst case scenario bitrates of only
200 kbls can be achieved for a transmit power between 10 and 100 W.
Figure 10 shows the bitrate versus distance of a 128-tone DMT system for discrete capacity and various bit ,
 ~ l [wan]
~ r s o r Power

Figure 8: Bitrate versus number of tones Figure 9: Bitrate versus transmit power

Figure 10: Bitrate versus distance Figure 11: Waterfilling versus flat energy distribution

error rates. We only consider the best case scenario and assume a transmit power of 25 W. We conclude that at
distances below 1000 m bitrates above 1 Mbls are feasible even with bit error rates of low8.
Figure 11 compares the waterfilling energy distribution with the flat energy distribution for two different gaps,
0 dB (higher curves) and 8,9 dB (lower curves). We assume the best case scenario, a transmit power of 25 W
and 128 tones. The flat distribution, which is simpler to compute, exhibits almost no loss compared with the
waterfilling distribution.

6 Conclusions
We conclude that DMT is an interesting transmission scheme for obtaining high data rates on the power distribution
network in the CENELEC A-band. For distances below 1000 m bitrates above 1 Mbls are feasable with a nearly
optimal 128-tone DMT transmission scheme. Simulation results also indicate that for the best case scenario bitrates
of several hundreds of kbls can be obtained with a transmit power of only 100 mW. In order to obtain the same
bitrates in the worst case scenario a much higher transmit power (between 10 en 100 W) is necessary. Finally,
our results also confirm the findings of Chow [9] that a flat energy distribution exhibits neglegible performance
compared with the optimal waterfilling distribution.
In future work it is interesting to investigate the influence of narrowband noise and synchronous noise on the
system's performance. Adaptive loading is able to mitigate these type of noise sources just by switching off the
affected tones. However the poor bandpass filtering properties of the FFT may cause problems when the interfering
frequency doesn't fall on the FFT's grid, which is likely to be the case. The use of windowing techniques in the
time domain to improve the frequency behavior of the FFT is one option. Another possibility is to consider other
orthogonal transformations like the wavelet transform, with better bandpass filtering properties. The disastrous
influence of impulse noise cannot be overcome with these improved bitloading strategies. Some kind of forward
error correction should be combined with multicarrier modulation in order to provide frequency and time diversity.

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