Dynamic Bandwidth Organization for Broadband PLC Multi-Cell System

Abstract

B-PLC (Broadband Powerline Communications) is an access technology which utilizes the low-voltage cables network to offer telecommunications services to the subscriber. The network is organized according to the actual available infrastructure of the electrical power lines. The whole B-PLC network can be organized as a multicell system. Each B-PLC cell contains a base station providing access to all subscribers and connected itself to the backbone network. Each cell requires an amount of transmission capacity for serving its subscribers. The transmission in a cell may crease interference to the others; therefore some of them cannot utilize the same frequency or time slot at the same time. Because the bandwidth requirements from each cell are dynamically changed, e.g. users turn on or off, it is necessary to propose and apply dynamic bandwidth management mechanisms to organize the limited bandwidth between multiple B-PLC cells. The mechanisms have also to improve the efficiency of the bandwidth usage. The overall network performance depends on the methods utilizing for bandwidth organization and its parameters. Lots of algorithms have been proposed to improve the quality of service of the channel assignment in telecommunications. This thesis proposes an algorithm based on the game theory to improve the channel allocation in a PLC network. A distributed and dynamic channel assignment method is proposed to improve the static method. In a fair situation each cell has the same resources per user. In the proposed algorithm each station acts for itself in a selfish way, but taking into account the fairness between users. Furthermore, it is intended to reach a situation in which the best channel reuse is achieved.