In recent times, power line communication (PLC) has an ability of communicating the signals and messages making use of the existing power lines without going for new mediums such as optical fibers or radio waves. Considering the voltage, electrical networks are rated as low (1 kV), medium (1–100 kV), and high (>100 kV) networks and the communication problems in these networks increase with increase in voltage. In order to establish high-speed data communications with data rates in the range of megabit/s over power line networks, dedicated communication systems considering the hostile channel properties are required. In addition to signal distortion, losses in cables and multipath propagation, noise from the system also plays a key role to alter the digital communication over power line networks which is dealt in this project. In this work, the signals are obtained with less bit error rate (BER) using Rayleigh fading channel improving the efficiency of the whole system. Different modulation techniques are compared in narrowband power line communication (PLC) systems, and some suggestions are made for the improvement of data transmission in narrowband systems. The best compromise for single-carrier PLC modules between efficiency and architecture complexity is being investigated in this project. © 2018, Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.