Specification and design of a prototype filter for filter bank based multicarrier transmission

The specifications of filter banks for multicarrier transmission systems with a large number of subchannels are discussed, with application to xDSL and power line communication in mind. The near perfect reconstruction (PR) modulated approach is considered and the importance, for the system, of the prototype filter delay is stressed. An existing design technique known to be particularly relevant to the context is revisited from a frequency sampling perspective. The performance results in terms of subchannel noise floor and delay are given for several filter lengths and an experimental validation is provided. Finally, an improvement to the design technique is proposed, which brings a gain of 3.3 dB in subchannel interference power level.