Development, validation and utilization of an ITU-T G.9903 PHY simulator for communication performance evaluation

Power Line Communication (PLC) technologies allow the transmission of data through the powerlines and as such are very interesting to be used as access methods in the smart-metering paradigm. However those systems are prone to be affected by a wide variety of impairments (selective fading, reflections, variable noise, etc.). In the case of a wide scale smart-meter roll-out, a tool allowing a Distribution System Operator (DSO) to estimate the performance of a G3-PLC communication without the need to install test modems would be efficient. In this perspective, this paper presents a compliant ITU-T G.9903 G3-PLC PHY [1] software simulator for both the CENELEC-A and FCC bands. The ultimate goal of this simulator is to evaluate the impact of different impairments on a G3-PLC communication. As an example, the impact of the packet size, the frequency band chosen and the effect of a measured transfer function of a MV/LV disconnected power transformer is discussed in this paper.