Power Line Communication with Robust Timing and Carrier Recovery against Narrowband Interference for Smart Grid

Power line communication (PLC) is an important interconnection technology for the smart grid, but the robustness of PLC transmission is faced with a great challenge due to strong non-Gaussian noise and interference. In this paper, a narrowband interference (NBI) resistant preamble is designed, and an effective timing and frequency synchronization method is proposed for OFDM-based PLC systems in the smart grid, which is capable of simultaneously conveying some bits of transmission parameter signaling (TPS) as well. In the time domain, the cyclic extension of the training OFDM symbol is scrambled, which makes it feasible to combat against NBI contamination. More accurate timing detection and sharper correlation peak can be implemented under the power line channel and the AWGN channel in the presence of NBI, compared with the conventional Schmidl’s and Minn’s methods with the same preamble length. Furthermore, the TPS transmitted using the proposed method is also immune from the NBI. The proposed method is capable of improving the synchronization performance of the PLC transmission significantly, which is verified by theoretical analysis and computer simulations.