Soft detection with synchronization and channel estimation from hard quantized inputs in impulsive UWB Power Line Communications

We consider an ultra wide band power line communication system that deploys binary impulse modulation. We propose a simple matched filter receiver that uses one-bit quantized input samples for frame synchronization and soft channel estimation with data training. Data detection can still use unquantized (soft) inputs. The proposed algorithm has low complexity and it requires less memory and computational power than the unquantized maximum likelihood synchronization algorithm. It produces small excess noise w.r.t. the unquantized algorithm for low signal-to-noise ratios. Simulation results over highly frequency selective PLC channels confirm that also the bit-error- rate performance penalty is small.