Nonlinear decision feedback estimation for multicarrier power line communication

This paper presents a nonlinear decision feedback channel estimation technique for Discrete Multi Tone (DMT) transmission in broadband indoor powerline communications (PLC). The estimation is carried out in a decision directed mode and the decisions are made using a modified self organizing map (SOM) classifier. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated through simulations over measured power line channels. It is shown that when nonlinearities at the transmitted signal are significant, a nonlinear decision feedback at the receiver improve the symbol error rate (SER).