Modulation Flexibility in PLC: A Unified MCM Transceiver Design and Implementation

Multicarrier modulations (MCMs) have been considered as a good means to combat the frequency-selective fading. In practice, the MCM idea has already been integrated in most of the modern communication applications, including power line communications (PLCs). However, even in the MCM conception, there still exist several proposals of different schemes that remain competing with each other. In this paper, we unveil a flexibility gain that can possibly be obtained from the coexistence of different MCMs. This flexibility is termed as “modulation flexibility,” meaning that we switch among different MCM schemes according to the transmission environment, and such idea can be eventually realized by a unified MCM transceiver. This paper includes a presentation of its efficient implementation as well as its performance evaluation.