Performance Analysis of Dual-Hop Mixed PLC/RF Communication Systems

Abstract: In this paper, we study a dual-hop mixed power line communication and radio-frequency communication (PLC/RF) system, where the connection between the PLC link and the RF link is made by a decode-and-forward (DF) or amplify-and-forward (AF) relay. Assume that the PLC channel is affected by both additive background noise and impulsive noise suffers from Log-normal fading, while the RF link undergoes Rician fading. Based on this model, analytical expressions of the outage probability (OP), average bit error rate (BER), and the average channel capacity (ACC) are derived. Furthermore, an asymptotic analysis for the OP and average BER, as well as an upper bound expression for the ACC are presented. At last, numerical results are developed to validate our analytical results, and in-depth discussions are conducted.