Fundamental Performance Limits for PLC Systems Impaired by Impulse Noise

In this paper, we provide insights on the ultimate performance limits, in terms of achievable information rate, for power line communication (PLC) systems impaired by impulse noise. In particular, we analyze single carrier (SC) and multiple carrier (MC) transmission systems employing quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) formats. In order to compute the information rates of standard MC systems, we introduce a theoretically equivalent channel model which allows the exact computation of the information rate. This simplified channel model will be referred to as interleaved MC channel model. We show that the use of MC schemes leads to an unavoidable loss with respect to SC schemes. In order to validate our theoretical results, we analyze the bit error rate (BER) performance of SC and MC schemes through Monte Carlo simulations. Several trellis-coded modulation (TCM) and low-density parity-check (LDPC)-coded schemes are considered