A cooperative MAC protocol to improve the performance of in-home broadband PLC systems

Abstract

In this work, we discuss the use of cooperative medium access control (CMAC) protocols to reduce packet loss rate and to improve goodput of in-home broadband power line communication (PLC) systems. To support this discussion, we, for the first time, present a statistical packet error rate (PER) analysis of measured in-home PLC channels by adopting a single relay model. Additionally, we outline a simple CMAC protocol that is capable of exploiting the diversity offered by in-home electric power grids. Using this protocol, we aim to show the impact of bandwidth variation, PER variation and of relative relay location on system performance. Thus, we show that packet loss rate and goodput improve when frequency bandwidth increases. Also, results show that cooperation at the link layer does not offer advantages if the PER values of direct and relayed links are very high or very low. Furthermore, we note that the improvements depend on the location of the node relay in relation to the nodes source and the destination (i.e., network improves if the relay is located near the source or in the midway between the source and the destination). Finally, a comparison between orthogonal frequency division multiple access - time division multiple access (OFDMA-TDMA) and time division multiple access - orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (TDMA-OFDM) schemes show that the simple CMAC protocol is more effective when it is used together with the former scheme than the latter.