Combating impulsive noise and ISI in power line communication systems

Power line communication (PLC) continues to draw increasing interest with a potential for a wide range of applications including cost-free last-mile communication solution and smart grid monitoring. However, signals transmitted through the power lines deteriorate badly due to the presence of severe inter-symbol interference (ISI) and harsh impulsive noise. This work studies reliable communication over narrow-band power lines by exploiting new ways of turbo equalization that is specifically designed for PLC. By introducing useful precoding to reshape ISI, optimizing maximum a posteriori (MAP) detection to specifically address the random impulsive noise, and performing soft iterative decision refinement, the new equalizer demonstrates a gain significantly better than the existing turbo equalizers.