“While physical layer security (PLS) is a well understood topic in wireless communications, we have only recently addressed PLS in PLC. The PLC channel has very peculiar characteristics that render differently from the well understood radio channel,” Andrea Tonello says and he further comments, “Signal propagation in PLC networks is affected by a certain level of determinism that significantly influences the channel statistics and introduces correlation between the channel of the intended user and an eavesdropper. All this has an influence on the secrecy rate – a measure for the achievable speed of communication with total confidentiality”.
This work on PLS has obtained the IET Premium Award 2016 and attests the outstanding research that is carried out by Tonello’s group on Power Line Communications. This is the third award received by Tonello and his group in 2016 including the two best paper awards at IEEE ISPLC 2016. “We are devoting great endeavors to the field of PLC where we carry out research at experimental as well as theoretical level. We look at applications that can directly boost the PLC market ranging from home networking to smart grids and in-vehicle communications. This award is such a great encouragement to keep our focus and contribute even more,” Andrea Tonello states.
Another important aspect is to increase energy efficiency of PLC networks through the use of cooperative protocols. For this goal, in a recent paper we have investigated the use of relaying techniques equipped with energy-harvesting capabilities. The combination of energy harvesting and decode and forward relaying has shown to offer energy efficiency improvements of more than 30% compared to conventional DF relaying schemes.
Selected Publications
K. Rabie, B. Adebisi, A. M. Tonello, G. Nauryzbayev “For More Energy Efficient Dual-hop DF Cooperative Relaying PLC Systems,” IEEE Systems Journals, 2017.
W. Bakkali, P. Pagani, T. Chonavel, A. M. Tonello: Energy Efficiency Performance of Decode and Forward MIMO Relay PLC Systems, Proc. of IEEE ISPLC, Germany, 2016.
A. Salem, K. Rabie, K. Hamdi, E. Alsusa, A. M. Tonello: Physical Layer Security of Cooperative Relaying Power Line Communication Systems, Proc. of IEEE ISPLC, Germany, 2016.
A. Pittolo, A. M. Tonello: Physical Layer Security in Power Line Communication Networks, Physical and Data-Link Security Techniques for Future Communication Systems, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, M. Baldi, S. Tomasin (Ed.s), Springer, 2015.
A. Pittolo, A. M. Tonello: Physical Layer Security in PLC Networks: An Emerging Scenario, Other Than Wireless, IET Communications, 2014.
