OFDM and FBMC transmission techniques: a compatible high performance proposal for broadband power line communications

A filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) system having a high level of compatibility with the IEEE P1901 OFDM scheme is proposed. In order to reach the level of robustness, selectivity and performance required by the broadband power line, the approach is based on near perfect reconstruction (NPR) filters combined with OQAM modulation. A key feature of the approach is the fractionally-spaced sub-channel equalizer, which is able to compensate the channel distortions and cope with residual timing offsets. The system initialization procedure and the results of OFDM are exploited by FBMC and an efficient and accurate technique is described for the derivation of the sub-channel equalizer coefficients from the OFDM frequency domain equalizer coefficients. Then, the impact of the filter impulse response on the efficiency in packet transmission is minimized. Finally, the impact of the sub-channel spacing is investigated and, in a comparison on similar basis, it appears that the proposed FBMC system can reach 228 Mbit/s in maximum bit rate, versus 197 Mbit/s for OFDM, while providing a higher level of tone protection and robustness to jammers.