EMC Regulations and Spectral Constraints for Multicarrier Modulation in PLC

TL;DR

This paper reviews EMC regulations for Power Line Communication, analyzes pulse-shaped OFDM's compliance with spectrum constraints, and introduces a new modulation scheme, PS-CB-FMT, that improves spectrum management and system capacity.

Contribution

It introduces Pulse Shaped Cyclic Block Filtered Multitone modulation (PS-CB-FMT), a novel scheme that enhances spectrum compliance and system capacity in PLC systems.

Findings

PS-CB-FMT better fulfills spectrum norms than PS-OFDM.

PS-CB-FMT achieves higher system capacity.

Analysis of PLC EMC norms and measurement procedures.

Abstract

This paper considers Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) aspects in the context of Power Line Communication (PLC) systems. It offers a complete overview of both narrow band PLC and broad band PLC EMC norms. How to interpret and translate such norms and measurement procedures into typical constraints used by designers of communication systems, is discussed. In particular, the constraints to the modulated signal spectrum are considered and the ability of pulse shaped OFDM (PS-OFDM), used in most of the PLC standards as IEEE P1901 and P1901.2, to fulfill them is analyzed. In addition, aiming to improve the spectrum management ability, a novel scheme named Pulse Shaped Cyclic Block Filtered Multitone modulation (PS-CB-FMT) is introduced and compared to PS-OFDM. It is shown that, PS-CB-FMT offers better ability to fulfill the norms which translates in higher system capacity.