OFDM/OQAM: A Solution to Efficiently Increase the Capacity of Future PLC Networks

The popularity of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), or more precisely cyclic prefix-OFDM (CP-OFDM), which is indeed totally justified by its intrinsic properties, makes the breakthrough of other modulation techniques difficult. In the case of power-line communication (PLC) networks, windowed OFDM was the retained modulation in the HPAV specification, the current standard implemented in most of the recent in-home PLC systems. But another modulation, called OFDM/OQAM, has been recently presented as a viable alternative to the classical OFDM. Now, the results of our comparisons between the two modulations schemes, done in terms of capacity and throughput, aim at showing that the baseband version of OFDM/OQAM, named in short Hermitian symmetric-OQAM (HS-OQAM), is a serious candidate to efficiently improve data rates in PLC networks.