Highly reliable LDPC coded data transfer in home networks by using Canete’s PLC channel model

• A power line communication system for smart grids is investigated in this study.
• Canete’s PLC channel model is employed in this study.
• Several channel codes and decoder types are compared for performance evaluation.
• LDPC codes can be efficiently utilized for channel coding purposes in smart grids.

Power line communication (PLC) methods are presently among the most popular technologies for home environments due to their low-cost installation opportunities. In this study, the bit error rate (BER) performance of low-density parity-check (LDPC) coded communication systems is presented by using Canete’s PLC channel model over power lines in home networks. Various soft and hard decision LDPC decoders such as belief propagation (BP), weighted bit flipping (WBF), improved weighted bit flipping (IWBF) and implementation-efficient reliability ratio based weighted bit flipping (IRRWBF) decoders are employed in the modeled network. All of the simulations performed in Canete’s PLC channel model showed that remarkable performance improvement can be achieved by using short-length LDPC codes. Especially, the improvements are striking when the BP or IRRWBF decoding algorithms are employed on the receiver side.