Noise Resistant OFDM for Power-Line Communication Systems

In this paper, we present a new approach to noise suppression for power-line communications based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). Previous work for wireless systems has suggested that augmentation of OFDM using spreading codes prior to modulation offers some narrowband interference (NBI) resistant capabilities. We present a study of the performance of such a system for power-line networks-well known to be affected by such noise. Termed interference suppression OFDM (IS-OFDM) and its counterpart NBI avoidance (NBIA), we also present a further modification of these techniques in order to improve NBI suppression performance. The proposed algorithm, orthogonal narrowband interference avoidance (ONBIA), avoids narrowband interference on contaminated subcarriers while preserving the orthogonality of the spreading code. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the improvements of ONBIA over the standard IS-OFDM and NBIA methods across a wide range of interference-to-signal ratios (ISR).