Shortened frame design for narrowband powerline communication systems

In this 15.875paper, we propose a method to achieve high data rates using a shortened orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) frame format in the physical layer (PHY) for narrowband power line communication (NB PLC) systems. The new frame structure will combine the preamble and information in the same OFDM symbol so that the overhead from the preamble is reduced. Then we consider the optimal placement strategy for the preamble tones to minimize the performance degradation caused by channel and noise during preamble detection and channel estimation for the shortened frame. Finally we outline an adaptive algorithm to use effectively use the shortened preamble.