Decoding Technique based on OFDM and RS Codes Analogy in PLC Environment

This paper proposes an improved decoding technique to remove impulsive noise effects on broadband powerline communication systems. Presented contribution deals with Home Plug 1.0 OFDM-based PLC scheme in presence of impulsive noise modeled by a stochastic distribution approximation. In order to improve receiver BER regarding impulsive noise effect and to reduce the complexity processing, a decoding technique using analogy between Reed-Solomon Codes and OFDM transmission scheme is proposed. A novel regularized noise estimator is analytically defined and integrated at the PLC receiver path. This technique has as additional advantage not to require any coding stage at transmitter side. Simulation results of complete PLC system highlight good improvement in BER performances independently from noise pulses type and duration.