Ergodic Capacity of a DSL Binder Channel

The goal of this paper is to investigate the capacity of a symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) channel under Gaussian interference and thermal noise. Previous efforts only considered various analytical worst-case channel models to calculate the capacity of the DSL channel. Assuming a statistically averaged system, it is shown that the ergodic capacity of the system can be lower- bounded using Jensen´s inequality. This lower-bound is compared to the performance of some state-of-the- art spectrum management techniques for both the measured data and the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) model. Results indicate that the measured data obtain significantly higher data-rates than the ANSI model prediction. As well, it is found that the lower-bound derived in this paper could be used as an indication of achievable data-rates for scenarios where the channel statistics (expected values of transfer functions) are known. This lower- bound could be useful for system operators when estimating the capacity of their networks.