A Power-Line Communication Modem Based on OFDM

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a PLC (Power-Line Communication) Modem based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). The PLC device implements OFDM in both transmitter and receiver using VHDL programming. The OFDM processor is synthesized in a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) that acts as a Core Processor in the PLC Modem. Furthermore, the prototype includes the design and implementation of the stages needed to inject the signal into the power-line and to recover the same signal in other point of the PLC network. An analysis of several noise sources show that the PLC Modem performance produced a bit error percentage of 4.46% in the worst case, while 0.89% in the best case for the transmission/reception tested.