Short LDPC codes for NB-PLC channel with a differential evolution construction method

In this paper, we study the performance of Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes and we introduce an optimized version of these codes when applied on the short data blocks of a narrowband (NB) power line communications (PLC) system. We compare their performance with the one obtained when the G3 standard coding scheme is applied on the system, namely the scheme that concatenated convolutional with Reed-Solomon codes. Multipath propagation together with two noise scenarios are considered: background AWGN noise with and without the presence of impulsive noise. The results indicate that under the considered channel and noise conditions the introduced optimized LDPC codes can operate better than the concatenated scheme used in the G3 standard. The optimized irregular LDPC codes are obtained from the well-established method of differential evolution for finding a degree distribution pair that improves the performance. The evaluation of each candidate code, is proposed to be carried out with a method that takes into account the actual channel and noise conditions. The equivalent optimized degree distribution pairs are presented.