An Interconnection Approach and Performance

Tests for In-home PLC Networks

Luca Di Bert∗ , Salvatore D’Alessandro† , Andrea M. Tonello∗
∗ WiPLi Lab - Università di Udine - Via delle Scienze 208 - 33100 Udine - Italy
e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]
† WiTiKee s.r.l. - Via Duchi D’Aosta 2 - 33100 Udine - Italy

e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—The concept of the electrical grid conceived as an (PLCs) to support the requirements of the outdoor (bulk
infrastructure that only delivers power to the end users is going generation, transmission and distribution domains) SG appli-
to disappear. In the next years, the electrical grid will be viewed cations. On the other hand, broadband (BB) PLCs solutions
as a smart grid (SG), namely, a distributed complex large scale
system that needs to smartly manage flows of electricity produced are spreading to the in-home network market. This happens
by big or small plants. To fully exploit the SG potentialities, we because the PLC infrastructure is indeed pervasively deployed
think that it is mandatory to extend the SG concept to the home. and its exploitation for communication purposes does not
In our vision the smart home (SH) network has to be developed require any additional cost.
to offer a broad variety of heterogeneous services that will To fully exploit the SG potentialities, we think that it is
improve the quality of life, yet addressing energy consumption
challenges, and in parallel providing the delivery of information mandatory to extend the SG concept to the home, namely, the
and entertainment services. customers domain. In our vision the smart home (SH) network
In this paper, we describe a SH network architecture charac- has to be developed to offer a broad variety of heterogeneous
terized by a tree like topology, where the communication among services that will improve the quality of life, yet addressing
the nodes belonging to different levels of the tree is based on the energy consumption challenges, and in parallel providing the
internet protocol (IP). Some of the functionalities of this solution
have been implemented in a network testbed where broadband
delivery of information and entertainment services. Neverthe-
(BB) power line communication (PLC) devices are used to less, the full deployment and exploitation of a broad variety of
provide (i) an IP backbone to allow interconnection between electronic appliances and devices, e.g., TVs, HVACs, PCs as
heterogeneous devices belonging to different subnetworks, and well as sensors, detectors and actuators, is nowadays limited by
(ii) an increase of the performances of narrow band (NB) PLC coexistence and interconnection problems, i.e., interoperabil-
technologies.
ity. In fact, a large number of vendors has put on the market
devices for in-home applications that use different standard,
I. I NTRODUCTION
protocols, and even different media to communicate. In our
In the last years, we have assisted to an increased interest of opinion this is the main obstacle to the growth of the SH
the utility companies towards the development of communi- market.
cation technologies that allow for the remote automatic meter We think that, in order to exploit the huge potential of a
management (AMM). smart home, the full interoperability among different types of
Besides the need of AMM technologies, nowadays the standard and protocols has to be offered seamlessly. With this
utility companies are facing with new challenges such as aim in mind, we can easily liken a SH to Internet, i.e., a global
[1]: the safe integration and the management of renewable system made of independent networks of devices based on the
energy sources; the management of plug-in electric vehicles internet protocol (IP).
that may cause a large load increase on sections of the grid; the In this paper, we describe a SH network architecture. It is
management of demand side and demand response allowing characterized by a tree like topology, where the communica-
the customers to collaborate in order to adapt the production tion among the nodes belonging to different levels of the tree
and the delivery of electricity to achieve energy efficiency and is based on IP. To integrate devices, which are not IP based, in
saving. our IP network, we introduce the Bridge nodes. These nodes
In the next years, the electrical grid will be viewed as a translate IP packets into proprietary communication protocols
smart grid (SG), namely, a distributed complex large scale sys- and vice versa.
tem that needs to smartly manage flows of electricity produced The idea of using IP technology to ensure connectivity be-
by big or small plants. Therefore, the management of the SG tween devices within an in-home network has been presented
will require a pervasive telecommunication infrastructure to in several works in the literature. The differences brought by
allow the entire supply chain of electricity, to benefit from a this SH solution w.r.t. the ones presented in [2], [3], [4] can
bidirectional, reliable, short and long distance communication. be summarized as follows.
Industries and standardization organizations have proposed ∙ The network can be divided in Areas. Each Area is
the use of narrow band (NB) power line communications managed by an area gateway (AG). This allows for
 TABLE I
offering different services to different areas without the NB-PLC T ECHNOLOGIES .
need to know the services provided by the other AGs.
NB-PLC
Further, it overcomes the single point of failure problem.
Insteon Konnex X10
∙ The root node, which we refer to smart home gateway
Spectrum CENELEC C CENELEC B CENELEC B
(SHG), can request some services to the AGs. This allows CENELEC C
for applying complex scenarios in which one or more Modulation BFSK BFSK PPM
areas are involved. Spread FSK
In this paper, we show some of the functionalities of the Bit-rate (𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠) 2.4 1.2 to 2.4 0.05
presented SH solution through an implementation of a network MAC - CSMA CSMA/CD
testbed. More precisely, we first show the performance - in IP YES YES NO
terms of throughput and frame error rate - obtained testing in NB-PLC
a single and in a multi floor house two representative NB-PLC CEBus UPB HomePlug CC
solutions, i.e., one based on orthogonal frequency division Spectrum CENELEC C/ 50 Hz CENELEC A-C/
multiplexing (OFDM), and the other based on frequency shift FCC/ARIB 60 Hz FCC/ARIB
keying (FSK). The test results show that the performance Modulation Spread spectrum PPM DCSK
of the OFDM-based solution are very poor when working Bit-rate (𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠) 8.5 0.48 0.6–7.5
in the multi floor scenario where channels exhibit higher MAC CSMA/CD - CSMA/CA
attenuation. To solve this problem, we implement a network IP - - YES
prototype where BB-PLC devices are used to provide an
IP backbone that leads to a significant improvement of the
performances of the OFDM-based solution, and further it Table I, we only notice that the listed technologies work in
offers connectivity between heterogeneous devices belonging different frequency bands and adopt different physical (PHY)
to different subnetworks. and medium access control (MAC) layers. Therefore, these
The reminder of the paper is as follows. In Section II, we technologies are not interoperable. Furthermore, we note that
glance at the state-of-the-art of PLC technologies. Then, in even coexistence of those devices whose MAC layer is based
Section III, we describe the network architecture. The test on carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) is not assured since
campaign results are reported in Section IV, and finally, the this would require sharing some specific protocol structure and
conclusions follow in Section V. parameters.
II. S TATE - OF - THE -A RT OF PLC T ECHNOLOGIES Besides the technologies listed in Table I, we notice that
there are other NB-PLC technologies that have been devel-
Power line communications make use of the existing power
oped for smart grids applications. The most important are
line grid to transmit data signals. There is a broad range of
the PRIME [6], and the ERDF G3-PLC [7] solutions. The
applications for which PLCs have been or are being used, e.g.,
PRIME solution offers data rate up to 128 𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠, whereas
remote metering, command and control of domotic systems,
G3-PLC offers data rate up to 34 or 240 𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠 when working
small office-home office (SOHO), and recently, smart grid
on the CENELEC A or FCC band, respectively. Both the
applications. Essentially, the PLC devices can be grouped
previous solutions have the physical layer based on orthogonal
into two categories, i.e., narrow band and broadband devices,
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), and the MAC layer
according to the bit-rate that they can achieve.
based on CSMA.
Narrow Band PLC Technologies. They have been devel- Regarding the standardization aspect, currently, two work-
oped with the scope of offering indoor (home automation) ing groups, the IEEE P1901.2 and the ITU-T G.hnem, are
and outdoor (smart grid) command and control services. These specifying the PHY and the MAC layers of NB-PLC solutions
technologies are cheap and offer low bit-rates. The frequency for communication below 500 𝑘𝐻𝑧.
bands dedicated from standardization organizations to NB-
PLC devices vary among the continents. In the EU, the TABLE II
BB-PLC T ECHNOLOGIES .
CENELEC issued the standard EN 50065 that specifies four
frequency bands for communications over PL networks [5]. BB-PLC
The band A (3–95 𝑘𝐻𝑧) is reserved exclusively to power HomePlug AV HomePlug GP HD-PLC
utilities. The band B (95–125 𝑘𝐻𝑧) can be used for any Spectrum (𝑀 𝐻𝑧) 2–30 2–30 4–30
application. The band C (125–140 𝑘𝐻𝑧) is dedicated to in- Modulation OFDM OFDM/ W-OFDM
home networking systems. The band D (140–148.5 𝑘𝐻𝑧) is Bit loading QPSK Bit loading

reserved to alarm and security systems. In the US and Asia, Bit-rate (𝑀 𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠) 200 3.8–9.8 190

the regulation is different. FCC and ARIB allow PLC devices MAC TDMA CSMA/CA TDMA
CSMA/CA CSMA/CA
to work in the band 3–500 𝑘𝐻𝑧.
IP YES YES YES
In Table I, we report the NB-PLC technologies devel-
oped for home automation applications. For the interested
reader, more details can be found in [5, Chapter 7]. From Broadband PLC Technologies. They have been developed
 that provide the functionalities to the end-user. We note that
the EDs can be either physical nodes, e.g., TVs, PCs, sensors
Gateway
Backbone Bridge and actuators, or virtual nodes grouped into a device that we
Area X
Area Gateway Backbone
name as Bridge. The difference between a physical node and a
X
Bridge virtual node is that the first is IP addressable, while the second
Internet Smart Home Area Gateway represents a device that uses a proprietary network protocol
Gateway Y
(not IP based).
End Node

End Node Bridge Since we can have devices that operate using dif-
Area Gateway
Z ferent standard and/or protocols, we decide to gather those
compliant to a given standard, not IP based, in a subnetwork.
Fig. 1. Logical scheme of a generic smart home network. Each subnetwork is addressable through a Bridge. It is worth
noting that the Bridge can be also used to extend the coverage.
To be more precise, a subnetwork can be split in more
with the aim of offering SOHO and multimedia services. subnetworks in the case that some of its nodes are not in
Essentially, BB-PLC devices work on the frequency band 2– visibility.
30 𝑀 𝐻𝑧, and make use of advanced modulation techniques The main role of the Bridge is to virtualize each node of its
such as OFDM and bit-loading to offer bit-rates in the order subnetwork in order to be reachable by other IP based devices
hundreds of 𝑀 𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠. The most relevant examples of commer- and vice versa.
cial devices are the ones compliant with the HomePlug AV Area Gateway The next level of SH architecture is rep-
(HPAV) [8] and the HD-PLC [5, Chapter 7] industry standard. resented by the Area Gateways (AGs). Taking into account
Their MAC layer is based on time division multiple access the topology of the house, we assume to divide it into areas,
(TDMA) for high quality of service traffic, and to CSMA/CA where each area can represent one or more rooms. The AGs
for best effort traffic. Furthermore, their network layer is based are logical or physical entities that manage a given area of the
on IP. In Table II, we summarize the characteristics of BB- house (see Fig. 1).
PLC devices. It is interesting to note that both solutions, i.e., As anticipated above, under request, an AG gets the in-
HPAV and HD-PLC, have been used as baseline for the PHY formation regarding the EDs and their corresponding subnet-
layer specification of the IEEE P1901 standard, released in works, thus it will contain a data base with all the information
December 2010 [9]. Finally, we note that also ITU is delivering regarding its area.
the ITU-T G.hn standard for in-home communications over The AG is also responsible for building routing tables within
power lines, coax, and phone lines [10]. G.hn PLC devices its area. In particular, routing paths are selected taking into
will work on the frequency band up to 100 𝑀 𝐻𝑧, will adopt account the energy efficiency, i.e., the selected paths are the
OFDM, and will offer bit-rates up to 1 𝐺𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠. ones that need the lowest energy consumption to satisfy the
QoS constraints, e.g., bit-rate, latency, delay.
III. G LOBAL N ETWORK A RCHITECTURE
It is worth noting that the assumption of dividing the house
As we have seen, there are several PLC devices that can in areas allows for offering in a simple way a specific set
be used within the home to offer certain network services. of services to a given area of the house. This characteristic
Clearly, also wireless systems can be used. Unfortunately, renders this network different from the solutions presented in
in general, these devices cannot communicate. Therefore, we the literature, e.g., [2], [3], [4].
describe a network architecture that allows for an easy inte- Smart Home Gateway On top of SH network there is the
gration of the different communication systems overcoming Smart Home Gateway (SHG) that plays the role of coordinator
the lack of connectivity between devices. The general SH and supervisor for the whole network.
network architecture is depicted in Fig. 1, where the root, Area and Gateway Backbones As we have seen, the SH
represented by the Smart Home Gateway (SHG), plays the role network is pervasively deployed within the home. The choice
of interface between the home and the outdoor environment. of the physical medium that acts as backbone is therefore
In one hand, the SHG is connected to Internet and thus it is fundamental to reduce the set-up costs and make the SH
also reachable by energy service providers while on the other network solution attractive.
hand, it is connected to the second level of the SH network,
We think that the power line is the most convenient solution
represented by a certain number of Area Gateways (AGs),
to act as backbone. However, we note that this network is
through a backbone. These AGs are associated to the topology
media independent, and thus the backbone can be realized
of the home and manage the lower level that is represented
using any media combination.
by End Devices (EDs) and End Nodes (ENs), grouped into
subsystems/subnetworks.
IV. N ETWORK A RCHITECTURE T ESTBED
In the following we describe in detail the components of
the SH network. In order to test some of the functionalities of the network
End Device. At the bottom layer of the network, we find the architecture - in particular, the interconnection between NB
End Devices (EDs). They represent the devices of the network and BB PLC devices and the range extension - we have
developed a network testbed consisting of different areas con- 2 bytes long header is used to define the type of frame. The
nected through an IP backbone based on HPAV [8] BB-PLC following field is represented by the payload. As shown in
technology. Each area represents a given floor of the house and Fig. 3, three different types of payload are available according
comprises an Area Gateway (AG), a NB-PLC/IP Bridge, and a to the error correction mechanism, namely, low, medium
NB-PLC modem (end-node). The AGs have been implemented and high protection. Low protection drops any kind of error
by a network software running on a PC connected to the IP correction. Medium protection introduces 6 bits of forward
backbone through an ethernet cable. Note that, in the specific error correction (FEC) every data byte making the system
scenario, the absence of a SHG is not restrictive at all. In fact, capable of correcting 3 bit error burst in a 14 bit block. High
the communication among SHG and AGs or EDs (directly protection exploits a convolutional code with bit interleaving.
connected to the IP backbone) can be later implemented using The two bits of postamble terminate the frame. It is worth
client-server softwares - e.g., middleware solutions - as a result
of the underlaying IP technology. Data 1
1 byte
Data 2
1 byte
… Data n
1 byte
FCS
2 bytes

To set the performances of this network solution, in Sec-

(a) Low protection: 𝑚 = 8 (𝑛 + 2) bits.
tion IV-A, we define two metrics. Then, in Sections IV-B,
and IV-C, describe two representative NB-PLC solutions Data 1 FEC Data 2 FEC Data n FEC FCS 1 FEC FCS 2 FEC
…
whose PHY layer is respectively based on OFDM and FSK. 1 byte 6 bits 1 byte 6 bits 1 byte 6 bits 1 byte 6 bits 1 byte 6 bits

The two technologies are compared through a test campaign (b) Medium protection: 𝑚 = 14 (𝑛 + 2) bits.
in Section IV-D. Finally, in Section IV-E, we show the
improvement of the performance that are brought by the use Convoluonal( Data 1, Data 2, …, Data n, FCS )

of this network solution.

(c) High protection: 𝑚 = 16 (𝑛 + 2) bits.
A. Throughput and FER Definition Fig. 3. Payload structure for 𝑛 data bytes.
The first test that we will consider is meant to compare
FSK and OFDM based NB-PLC solutions. To this end, we noting that each data byte in the payload is part of the higher
define two representative metrics, namely, the throughput and layer frame, i.e., the MAC frame.
the frame error rate (FER). The throughput can be evaluated When showing numerical results, we set the FSK hardware
both at PHY and MAC layers as platform with the following parameters. The central frequency
is set to 72 𝑘𝐻𝑧 with a working baud rate of 4800 𝑏𝑝𝑠. The
𝑇 𝐻𝑅𝑃 𝐻𝑌 = 𝑚𝑁𝑔 [𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠] , (1) two FSK tones are at frequency 69.6 𝑘𝐻𝑧, and 74.4 𝑘𝐻𝑧.
Therefore, the system works in the CENELEC A band. Finally,
𝑇 𝐻𝑅𝑀 𝐴𝐶 = 𝑛𝑁𝑔 [𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠] , (2)
we choose to transmit the maximum amount of data bytes,
where 𝑁𝑔 represents the number of correct received frames i.e., 𝑛 = 64. Consequently, the payload length is set to 𝑚 =
per second detected exploiting either the knowledge of the {528, 1056} bits for low, and high protection.
transmitted frame, or the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) It is worth noting that FSK is also implemented in the KNX-
code where redundant bits are stored in the frame check PL132 standard [12] that is derived by the European Home
sequence (FCS). Furthermore, 𝑚 and 𝑛 respectively represent Systems (EHS) protocol specs [13].
the payload length (data encapsulated at the PHY layer) and C. OFDM-based System Details
the MAC layer data expressed in bits. As it will be clarified in
the following, for each system under test, we can set the total To test an OFDM NB-PLC solution, we use the hardware
number of transmitted frames 𝑁 . Therefore, the FER can be platform developed by Maxim [14]. It implements the PHY
obtained as and the MAC layers of an OFDM system compliant with the
( ) G3-PLC standard [7]. According to [14], in Fig. 4 we show
𝐹 𝐸𝑅 = 𝑁 − 𝑁𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑡 /𝑁, (3)
where 𝑁𝑔𝑡𝑜𝑡 is the total number of correct received frames in a Payload
m bytes

complete transmission. It is worth noting that FER takes into

account corrupted frames as well as missed frames. Preamble Header Data RS Parity FCS
variable 16 byte n bytes 8 byte 2 byte

B. FSK-based System Details Fig. 4. PHY frame format of an OFDM-based system.

To test a FSK NB-PLC solution, we use the hardware
platform developed by ADD [11]. A general PHY frame a general PHY frame. The preamble is a multi symbol field
encapsulation has the structure depicted in Fig. 2 where the 6 used to perform carrier sense operations, to enable control
functions and to synchronize the receiver and the transmitter.
Preamble Header Payload Postamble The next two fields, namely, header and data, represent the
6 bytes 2 bytes m bytes 2 bits
payload whose length depends on the transmission mode, i.e.,
Fig. 2. PHY frame format of a FSK-based system. normal and robust. In normal mode, the error correction is
performed through a Reed Solomon (RS) encoder, whereas
bytes long preamble is used for synchronization, whereas the the error check is done with a FCS. In robust mode, each bit
 TABLE IV
following the preamble is repeated 4 times. The FCS and RS AVERAGE T HROUGHPUT AND FER VALUES .
fields length are 2 and 8 bytes, whereas the data length are set
MAC THR [𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠] FER
to 𝑛 = 113 bytes for the normal mode, and 𝑛 = 8 bytes for
Single Floor Multi Floor Single Floor Multi Floor
the robust one. Consequently the frame duration is the same
FSK low 2.3098 2.2659 0 0.0190
for the two modalities.
FSK high 1.5208 1.5117 0 0.0060
The system works in the frequency band 32-95 𝑘𝐻𝑧
OFDM normal 18.909 3.4345 0.0033 0.7856
(CENELEC A) and its specification are detailed in Table III,
where the frame control header (FCH) denotes a part of the OFDM robust 1.3198 0.3992 0.0010 0.6646

preamble field that brings control information required for data

demodulation.
Now, in Table IV, we report the average throughput and
TABLE III FER values. From this table and Figs. 5, and 6, we note
OFDM- BASED SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
that, in general, OFDM allows for higher peak or average
Number of symbols 𝑁𝑠𝑦𝑚 = 40 throughput than FSK. However, it has also to be said that, FSK
Number of FFT points 𝑁𝐹 𝐹 𝑇 = 256 offers better robustness, where with robustness we mean the
Number of overlapped samples 𝑁𝑜 = 8 highest probable throughput value. For example, considering
Number of cyclic prefix samples 𝑁𝐶𝑃 = 30 the multi-floor case and FSK low/OFDM normal transmission
Modulation DBPSK, DQPSK
modes, with probability equal to 0.9, FSK and OFDM respec-
tively achieve a throughput of 2.079 𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠, and 0.055 𝑘𝑏𝑖𝑡/𝑠.
Number of FCH symbols 𝑁𝐹 𝐶𝐻 = 13
Nevertheless, the choice between FSK and OFDM has to be
Sampling frequency [MHz] 𝑓𝑠 = 0.4
done in conjunction with the required service.
Number of preamble symbols (without FCH) 𝑁𝑝𝑟𝑒 = 9.5
E. Connectivity and Range Extension
We now focus on the interconnection between NB and BB
D. FSK vs. OFDM PLC devices. Looking at Fig. 6(b)-right, we see that OFDM
shows very poor performance in terms of FER. Analyzing
In order to compare the NB-PLC solutions above described,
the data, we notice that the highest performance degradation
we performed two trial campaigns connecting, at each time, a
occurs during communication across different floors due to
couple of modems to two power sockets within a house.
the attenuation of PL channels. However, the use of the
The first campaign took place in a single floor house. HPAV backbone combined with the Bridge functionalities
Whereas, the second took place in a three-floor house, whose allow for increasing performances of the OFDM-based system.
electricity is distributed from the main panel (MP) to each In details, the HPAV modems are used to extend the IP
floor through a floor circuit breaker (CB) located at the MP. In backbone through different floors, and the Bridges provide the
the latter case, we considered either the transmission between connectivity between OFDM and HPAV. In this perspective,
outlets belonging to the same floor or between outlets be- the communications between OFDM modems (end node and
longing to different floors. Appliances have been plugged and Bridge) is performed on the same floor, while the communi-
unplugged, e.g., television, washing machine, battery charger, cation across different floors is performed by the HPAV.
fluorescent lamps, fridge, and so on. In Fig. 6(b)-right is depicted the CDF of the FER obtained
During the test campaign, we considered different types of using the HPAV extension. It is worth noting that there is a
communication modes. More in details, for the FSK-based huge improvement in term of FER.
system we used low and high robust transmission, while for the
OFDM-based system, we used normal and robust transmission V. C ONCLUSION
modes. Nowadays, several communication devices are available for
Fig. 5(a) and Fig. 5(b) respectively show the complementary home networking and automation. Nevertheless, in general,
cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the throughput, these are not interoperable. To solve this problem, we have
and the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the FER for presented a network architecture characterized by a tree like
the FSK-based solution. Although not shown, we notice that topology, where the communication is based on IP. Further-
no corrupted or lost frames have been observed using the FSK more, we have tested, in single and multi floor houses, two
solution in the single floor house. Therefore, the throughput representative NB-PLC devices, i.e., one based on FSK and
only depends on the modality by which the frames have been the other based on OFDM. Test results have shown that,
transmitted. The behavior changes when considering the multi- although OFDM, in general, allows for higher peak throughput
floor house. In this case, in fact, the FER increases and conse- than FSK, it shows poor performance in terms of FER, thus
quently the throughput decreases. This is simply explainable throughput, when working in the multi-floor house. This issue
observing that channels associated to multi-floor houses, and has been solved developing a network testbed where BB-PLC
in particular those associated to different floors, experience devices are used to provide an IP backbone that allows for (i)
higher attenuation than those belonging to a given floor. We connectivity between NB and BB PLC devices, and (ii) range
note the same behavior for OFDM (Figs. 6(a), and (b)). extension.
 Single Floor House Multi Floor House Single Floor House Multi Floor House
1 1 1 1
normal (MAC)
0.9 0.9 0.9 0.9 normal (PHY)
robust (MAC)
0.8 0.8 0.8 0.8
robust (PHY)
0.7 0.7 0.7 0.7
P( THR ≥ x )

P( THR ≥ x )

P( THR ≥ x )

P( THR ≥ x )
0.6 0.6 0.6 0.6

0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5

0.4 0.4 0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3

low (MAC)
0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2
low (PHY)
0.1 high (MAC) 0.1 0.1 0.1
high (PHY)
0 0 0 0
1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 0 10 20 30 0 10 20 30
x [kbit/s] x [kbit/s] x [kbit/s] x [kbit/s]

(a) PHY and MAC throughput for low and high robustness. (a) PHY and MAC throughput for normal and robust mode transmission.

Multi Floor House Single Floor House Multi Floor House

1 1 1
normal
0.9 0.9 0.9 robust
0.8 0.8 0.8
HPAV
extension
0.7 0.7 0.7
P( FER ≤ x )

P( FER ≤ x )

P( FER ≤ x )
0.6 0.6 0.6

0.5 0.5 0.5

0.4 0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3 0.3

0.2 0.2 0.2

0.1 low 0.1 normal 0.1

high robust
0 0 0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0 0.5 1
x x x

(b) FER for low and high robustness. (b) FER for normal and robust mode transmission.
Fig. 5. FSK-based system performances within single and multi floor houses. Fig. 6. OFDM-based system performances within single and multi floor
houses.

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