Power Line Carrier Apparatus Time-Domain Repetition

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Solution Overview

Problem

Existing power line carrier communication systems face challenges in noisy and impedance-varying environments, where OFDM-based methods like G3-PLC and PRIME are inadequate, requiring a more robust communication method that incurs significant data processing overhead.

Innovation Solution

A power line carrier transmission apparatus that modulates interleaved symbols using an OFDM scheme and repeatedly transmits time-domain OFDM signals, reducing data processing requirements while maintaining robust communication.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If time-domain repeated signals are created by reordering transmission symbols on a time axis and interleaving by multiple carrier frequencies, then communication robustness is improved, but data processing complexity increases significantly

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecommunication robustnessVSAvoiddata processing complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent applies preliminary action by performing interleaving and OFDM modulation on the original symbol sequence before creating time-domain repeated signals. This preprocessing approach ensures that the interleaving structure is established once, and subsequent repetitions can directly reuse this structure without requiring additional interleaving operations, thereby reducing overall data processing complexity while maintaining communication robustness

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent merges the interleaving operation with the time-domain repetition process. Instead of separately interleaving each repeated signal, the system performs a single interleaving operation that encompasses all repetitions, combining multiple functions into one processing stage. This merging significantly reduces the computational burden and data processing requirements

Inventive Principle:
Principle #5Merging (Combining)

2Reliability

If interleave processing is performed for each time-domain repeated signal, then communication robustness is improved, but the amount of data processing increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improvecommunication robustnessVSAvoiddata processing efficiency
Core Design Contradiction:
ReliabilityVSProductivity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent performs interleaving as a preliminary action on the original symbol sequence before generating time-domain repeated signals. This preliminary interleaving ensures that all subsequent repetitions inherit the same interleaved structure, eliminating the need to perform interleaving processing for each repeated signal individually, thereby maintaining robustness while improving data processing efficiency

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The patent segments the communication process into two distinct stages: (1) a single interleaving and OFDM modulation stage that processes the original symbol sequence, and (2) a time-domain repetition stage that simply replicates the processed signal multiple times. This segmentation allows the complex interleaving operation to be performed only once, while the simpler repetition operations can be efficiently executed multiple times, improving overall processing efficiency

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentEP2663006B1Power line carrier transmission apparatus and communication system
Publication Date: 2020.08.05 RENESAS ELECTRONICS CORP
  • EP2663006B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP2663006B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP2663006B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

A power line carrier transmission apparatus according to an aspect of the present invention is a power line carrier transmission apparatus that transmits a transmission symbol via a transmission path. The transmission apparatus includes a frequency/time interleave unit that interleaves the transmission symbol, an OFDM modulation unit that OFDM-modulates the interleaved transmission symbol, a time-domain repeated transmission unit that repeatedly transmits the transmission symbol, which is modulated by the OFDM modulation unit, M times (M is an integer larger than 1) in a time domain.