Power-Constrained Physical-Layer Goodput Maximization for Broadband Power Line Communication Links

Power Line Communication (PLC) systems are currently envisioned as a possible solution for distributing multimedia contents and allowing Internet access with a capillary (already built) network without demanding further infrastructure. The real challenge for PLCs consists in providing connectivity where Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN)-based Internet Access and/or Wi-Fi/WiMAX seem to be unable to solve the problem of Digital Divide. In this paper we introduce a new metric, i.e. the goodput, to balance transmission rate and bit error rate (BER) in resource allocation issues for Power Line Communication systems. In detail, we state the well-known integer bit-loading problem as a goodput maximization with constraints on the power consumption and the maximum decoding time. The use of Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) allows to pursue the goodput maximization weighing error probability and transmission rate which would have otherwise been in trade-off. Numerical results are presented to stress how our solution improves system performances, both in ideal conditions and with additional impairments such as crosstalk and impulsive noise, with respect to the conventional Maximum Rate (MR) and Minimum BER (MB) approaches and to validate the suitability of TCMs in comparison with higher complexity codes.