On Energy Efficiency in Bi-directional Powerline Communication Systems

Powerline communication (PLC) systems have been used to enable broadband home applications such as high definition television (HDTV). However, the massive deployment of these devices has triggered the discussion on high energy consumption. Thus, a "green" PLC systems are attractive solution to reduce the energy consumption especially in large deployments. This paper theoretically discusses the benefit of bi-directional PLC relaying in terms of energy efficiency. We evaluate the efficient domain selection to minimize the total energy consumption of the network. On the other hand, we present an optimal power allocation for the given user's quality of service (QoS). In our analysis, we consider PLC relay networks with bi-directional symmetric and asymmetric traffic. Our results demonstrate that the bi-directional PLC system can achieve higher energy efficiency by proper domain selection. In addition, we show that the impulsive noise may act as a limiting factor for designing a green PLC systems.