Performance of LDPC and Turbo Coded Power Line Communication over Multipath Channel and Narrowband Noise

Abstract

Low-voltage Power Line Communication (PLC) is an efficient and easy-deployed approach for data transmission while using the power lines as channels. Since power lines connect with many kinds of electric devices and are always exposed to open working environments, the PLC channels typically suffer from sever narrowband interference or noise, as well as deep multi-path fading. To guarantee a reliable transmission in PLC, efficient error control techniques have been developed. Turbo code is a commonly used coding and decoding method in PLC. In contrast to Turbo, we investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) versus Turbo, while taking into account the scenarios of different codeword lengths, channel paths, the impacts of diverse noise patterns. A low-voltage PLC system with LDPC-OFDM and Turbo-OFDM is simulated for analyzing and comparing the performance of Turbo and LDPC code in PLCs. Finally, we proposed an adaptive coding and decoding approach for PLC over narrowband noise. Simulation results indicate that LDPC could be a viable alternative coding method for the next generation of PLC.