Fountain codes for impulsive noise correction in low-voltage indoor power-line broadband communications

Abstract

Broadband communications for indoor power-line networks with impulsive noise using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is considered in this paper. From earlier investigations, it is known that this channel suffers from multipath fading and frequency selectivity along with man-made impulsive bursty noise. Nevertheless, the calculated channel capacity limit promises very high data rates over this channel. Enhancement techniques, such as concatenated coding can help an OFDM system to tackle impulsive noise burst. In this paper we employ Digital Fountain codes, which are a new class of erasure detecting codes. These codes are considered the state-of-the-art discovery in coding theory due to their simplicity and performance.