High-resolution and low-complexity dynamic topology estimation for PLC networks assisted by impulsive noise source detection

Power line communication (PLC) network is a promising solution for smart grid and home broadband applications. However, its topology is not always available and is time-varying due to frequent load changes. The existing topology estimation approaches require installation of a large number of PLC modems or suffer limited resolution. Moreover, they are designed for static PLC networks and need to be repeated at a regular basis to combat topology changes. The authors propose a high-resolution and low-complexity dynamic topology estimation scheme for time-varying indoor PLC networks, which consists of three parts: (i) a time-frequency domain reflectometry based path length estimation method, which requires measurement at a single PLC modem and achieves a much higher resolution than the frequency domain reflectometry based method; (ii) a node-by-node greedy algorithm for topology reconstruction, which is much more computationally efficient than the existing peak-by-peak searching algorithm; (iii) an impulsive noise assisted dynamic topology re-estimation method, which results in a significant complexity reduction over fixed-frequency re-estimation.