Space-Time Parallel Cancellation Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing in Power Line Communications

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission technique is an effective method to mitigate frequency selective multipath characteristic of PLC channel. It is used for data communication in Power Line systems. However, OFDM is susceptible to lack of orthogonality between its subcarriers. Inter-carrier interference (ICI) cancellation technique was introduced in wireless communication to address that issue. Parallel Cancellation (PC) scheme is one method proposed for mitigating ICI in wireless systems. In this paper, Space-Time Parallel Cancellation (STPC) with OFDM is applied to PLC. Linear time variant (LTV) 15-path PLC channel model is employed to investigate BER performance of the 2x1 and 2x2 ST-OFDM versus 2x2 STPC-OFDM systems in Additive Impulsive Gaussian Noise (AIGN) via computer simulations.