Statistical modeling of the Brazilian in-home channels: PLC and cascade of PLC and wireless

Abstract

This thesis aims to discuss the statistical characterization and modeling of channel frequency responses of power line channels and the series concatenation of power line and wireless channels (hybrid power line - wireless channels), comprising the frequency band from 1.7 up to 100 MHz. The characterization and modeling rely on statistical analyses based on data sets constituted by measured channel frequency responses estimates, which were acquired through a measurement campaign carried out in several Brazilian residences. In this regard, an enhanced statistical modeling method is proposed to obtain the statistical models based on the assumption that channel frequency responses are uncorrelated random process and, as a consequence, the magnitude and phase components of these channel frequency responses constitute two independent random processes. By adopting four statistical criteria, it is shown the best statistical distributions that models the magnitude and phase functions of channel frequency response estimates. Moreover, an interpolation technique based on cubic Splines is applied, offering representative waveform of the parameters of the best statistical distributions in the continuous-time domain with a low number of coefficients. Furthermore, the algorithms used to implement the enhanced statistical modeling method are described. Concerning to the power line channels, it is shown that the previous statistical modeling, found in the literature, may not be suitable for modeling the Brazilian in-home power line channels. As a result, an statistical model for Brazilian in-home power line channel is introduced. Regarding the hybrid power line - wireless channels, an statistical model is introduced.