Time diversity scheme and adaptive signal clipping with blanking applied to G3 systems for narrowband power‐line communications

In this paper, an investigation into the behavior of modern narrowband power‐line communication systems when concatenated with both a fountain code named Luby transform code and a combination of nonlinear preprocessing techniques called signal clipping with blanking is presented. The new systems can be used in applications such as the automatic meter reading component of smart grid technology. Testing is performed on a range of systems provided by the G3 standard and the results show that a bit error rate improvement can be achieved with the correct encoder/decoder settings. The recommended settings include an adaptive technique that uses Gaussian elimination for Luby transform code decoding and code rates that depend on the system specifications used. From there, it is shown that a further improvement is achieved when both the Luby transform code and adaptive signal clipping/blanking based on signal power are combined. It is found that these modifications present a complexity trade‐off, which is higher on the receiver side. This added complexity can be well‐tolerated in automatic meter‐reading systems because of the star topology and asymmetric nature of the network, which has a centralized agent acting as a receiver that collects data from various transmitter nodes.