Upper and lower bounds estimation of the response of Indoor Power Line Communication systems characterized by cyclostationary loads

In this paper we focus our attention on the channel variation of indoor powerline channels caused by the presence of nonlinear loads. The nonlinear behavior of some electrical devices (with respect to the mains voltages) produces short time variations synchronous to the mains. The goal of our investigation is to obtain estimates of the upper and lower bounds of the channel’s response both in the time and in the frequency domain in such situation. Nonlinearities are modeled in the frequency domain as the sum of a nominal value impedance and a number of elementary pulse shaped terms with uncertain weights. The indoor power line channel is modeled in the wavelet domain and a sensitivity analysis with respect to the weights is performed by the adjoint circuit method. The proposed method allows a fast and accurate evaluation of the bounds of the response of the channel avoiding time consuming Montecarlo simulations.