# Broadband Power Line Communication for Integration of Energy Sensors within a Smart City Ecosystem
## 2 State of the Art
### Related Works
#### 2.3.2 Simulations of BPLC Systems  
This part deals with several published articles on BPLC simulation in the NS-3 environment. Ref. [52] focuses on hybrid communication architectures for distributed smart grid applications. The presented smart grid network contains a combination of five types \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline \hline
**Ref.** & **Year** & **Content Focus** & **Content Type** \\ \hline
[40] & 2020 & Comparison of routing protocols under NS-2 and NS-3 & Simulations \\ \hline
[43] & 2018 & Comparison of network simulators & Comparative study \\ \hline
[44] & 2020 & SLR of main research areas in which NS-3 has been used & Literature review \\ \hline
[45] & 2015 & Simulations of routing protocols for MANET in NS-3 & Simulations \\ \hline
[46] & 2017 & Simulations of routing protocols for MANET in NS-3 & Simulations \\ \hline
[47] & 2018 & Routing protocols under black hole attack for MANET in NS-3 & Simulations \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Papers dealing with the use of network simulators in general. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l l} \hline \hline
**Ref.** & **Year** & **Content Focus** & **Simulator** & **Line** \\ \hline
[23] & 2013 & Simulation and modelling of a PLC channel & NS-3 & LV \\ \hline
[50] & 2016 & Simulation of complex topology & NS-3 & LV \\ \hline
[48] & 2013 & Simulation of simple topology with noise impact & custom & MV \\ \hline
[51] & 2011 & Simulation and modelling of the HomePlug AV system & NS-2 & LV \\ \hline
[49] & 2008 & Simulations focused on load impedance, line length, branches & custom & LV \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 2: Papers dealing with simulations with focus on the line type. of communications technology: LoWPAN, PLC, Ethernet, WiFi mesh and WiMAX. The authors created nine NS-3 simulations to verify the performance of all communication technologies in comparison. These comparisons evaluate, for example, BPLC and NPLC network simulations where various models of the channel were used. This work can be considered as a complex design of a smart grid network in NS-3. On the other hand, ref. [48] demonstrates the mathematical relations of a communications channel with focus on overhead medium-voltage topologies with and without lateral branches, which has not been considered in previous work. In [48] the noise on a MV line is described in detail, which plays an important role in the value of the bit-error rate. In this case NS-3 simulations were not provided, but the external electromagnetic (EM) field is examined by focusing on the noise induced. The external EM fields are considered to be the main source of occurring noise on the overhead MV lines and a novel method capable to calculate the corresponding noise levels is presented. The significance of the noise on overhead MV lines is described in paper [53]. Research on the noise characteristics in the frequency range of interest from 40 kHz to 2 MHz is presented. The authors of [54] aimed to create simulations of the advanced metering infrastructure AMI architecture using BPLC technology and compared this with NPLC simulations. The work considers the real requirements for AMI systems and determines the suitability of BPL and NBPL technology for remote readings from electricity meters. The availability and delay of transmitted data depending on the number of electricity meters in the network are investigated. It also partially presents the issue of security in terms of encrypted communication in comparison with the WPA (AES) standard for WiFi. The goal is to predict the real performance of the system in a particular deployment under the conditions of the real AMI field. A simple work on PLC simulation in NS-3 can be found in [55], where the description of the developed simulation model is narrow. This article describes the simulations shallowly and summarizes the basic possibilities of PLC simulation in NS-3. An article close to this work is [56], where an advanced G.hn simulation was provided in the frequency band 1.8-30 MHz.