Performance evaluation of in-home broadband PLC systems using a cooperative MAC protocol

In this article, we present an in-depth analysis of cooperation benefits in power line communication (PLC) networks. In order to conduct our evaluation, we present a new, yet simple, cooperative medium access control protocol (CMAC). Our new CMAC protocol uses system nodes as relays adaptively, according to these nodes idleness or busyness. Moreover, the new protocol also explores path diversity offered by an in-home broadband PLC. We have conducted simulations, based on real packet error ratios of in-home networks, using a wide range of configurations. In sum, our results show that cooperation reduces packet loss ratio and improves goodput. For instance, in some scenarios, the protocol we proposed is able to enhance goodput up to 36% and reduce packet loss ratio up to 43% in comparison to a system without cooperative protocols. Moreover, our simulations allow us to delimit the most suitable scenarios to use cooperation. Based on our analyses, we can state the following: (i) improvements increase when frequency bandwidth increases; (ii) irrelevant improvement occurs if total transmission power is too high or too low; (iii) gains offered by cooperation are more relevant depending on relative node relay position in relation to nodes source and destination; (iv) the proposed protocol show improvements regardless of the choice between OFDMA-TDMA and TDMA-OFDM schemes, but improvements are higher when it is used together with the OFDMA-TDMA scheme.