An efficient network coding scheme for reliable multicast power line communications

Nowadays, Power Line Communication (PLC) technology is receiving a renewed attention for a wide class of innovative applications and services, mainly thanks to the advantage of using the existing electrical infrastructures, thus reducing the deployment costs. However, such electrical infrastructures have been originally conceived for power distribution and not for data. Hence, signal propagation is affected by more severe impairments than traditional media, such as impulsive noise and frequency selectivity. Furthermore, new emerging PLC applications need more efficient information delivery schemes that encompass both unicast and multicast mode. Towards this end, this paper deals with an efficient Network Coding (NC) based multicast reliable PLC scheme that makes use of (i) a decision direct impulsive noise mitigation approach and of (ii) a scheme based on multiple transmissions of a same symbols in the frequency domain. A suitable optimization procedure is also proposed here with the aim of improving the performance of the proposed scheme, under the constraint of a specified maximum data flow delivery failure probability. Finally, comparisons with alternative solutions are provided in order to highlight the significant advantages of the proposed scheme in terms of data flow delivery delay and overall transmission energy cost, under specific service constraints.