Multichirp code division multiple access for smart grids and internet of things

Abstract

This work outlines important characteristics of hybrid power line communication (PLC)/wireless data communication system for smart grid (SG) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Moreover, it discusses the hybrid systems advantages in comparison to non-hybrid ones. These advantages are demonstrated not only in the technical point of view but also in the infrastructural perspective. Also, this thesis highlights a connec-tion between the capillarity of IoT and the communication infrastructure provided by SG as well as the security aspects that relate SG and IoT context. Furthermore, this work addresses the environmental influence on wireless and power line communications. In another hand, there is a huge research effort regarding advanced data communication technologies considering both low bit rate IoT and SG applications in order to comply with the requirements to design telecommunications systems. Aiming to maximize the use of the available bandwidth for PLC applications, this thesis makes use of the orthog-onal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM) scheme that uses discrete Fresnel transform in an analogous fashion as discrete Fourier transform. Previous works showed interesting performance results for such scheme in passband applications (e.g., wireless, optical fiber, and underwater acoustic media). This work addresses the design of versions of the OCDM scheme that can allow the data communication using baseband signals, making possible the application of the OCDM scheme in PLC systems. Furthermore, it introduces a mul-tiuser based scheme termed multichirp code division multiple access (MCp-CDMA), which is a combination of CDMA and OCDM, in order to accommodate a large number of nodes and end-points aiming narrowband PLC that is also suitable for SG and IoT applications. Finally, numerical results point out that for a hard and noisy environment, OCDM scheme is able to soften the impulsive noise effect. Also, OCDM scheme demonstrated outstand-ing results when the channel length is unknown comparatively to Hermitian symmetric orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and single carrier-cyclic prefix schemes. The simulations using the MCp-CDMA scheme demonstrated great stability and performance consistency among the different scenarios analyzed.