Modeling and optimization of energy consumption for power line communication systems

In the last few years, the research in the area of green and energy-effcient networking has gained a great interest on the part of network providers and equipment manufacturers. Considering Power Line Communication (PLC), more effort has been made on achieving higher data rates, but the topic of energy effciency has still not been explored very much yet. In this thesis, we focus on the energy effciency of indoor PLC networks. On the one hand, we investigate the power consumption of PLC modems by conducting several experiments and measurements of many commercial modems. Based on the results, we provide a detailed analysis of the power consumption behaviour of PLC modems. Then, we propose measurement-based power models for both Single Input Single Output (SISO) and Multiple Input Multiple Output modems (MIMO) PLC modems. The developed models allow us to quantify the power consumption associated with various communication states and different operation modes of PLC modems. On the other hand, we study the benefits of using relay nodes in PLC networks for energy effciency purpose. We consider half-duplex Decode and Forward (DF) relay systems and explore their performance for two strategies, i.e., when the time allocation between the source and the relay nodes is set uniform and when it is optimized. We propose an iterative algorithm to derive the optimal time allocation for power minimization. Finally, through extensive numerical results based on both measured PLC channels and PLC noise and simulated ones, we show by considering two representative scenarios, that depending on the idle power consumption of PLC modems, signifcant power saving can be achieved by implementing relaying in PLC networks.