Hybrid High-Speed Power Line and Wireless Communication for 5G Network

Performance of throughput, coverage and reliability in smart grid and 5G networks can be significantly improved by exploiting high-speed power line communication (HPLC) and wireless communication (WLC) simultaneously. However, coordinated use of HPLC and WLC suffers the difference of transmission characteristics and channel variability of both media. In this paper, dynamical selection of access links and power allocation is investigated for the hybrid HPLC and WLC system, where orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is utilized in HPLC and non-orthogonal multiple access is used in WLC. Since the formulated sum rate maximization problem is non-convex, constraint relaxation and auxiliary variables are introduced to transform the original problem into a convex one. Then, a sub-optimal but efficient transmission scheduling and power allocation algorithm is proposed. Further, we design an optimal solution based on branch and bound method. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate that the designed algorithm can improve sum rate significantly compared to pure HPLC and pure WLC benchmarks.