Performance Evaluation of LDPC Codes on PLC Channel Compared to Other Coding Schemes

In this paper we study how power line communications are affected by different coding techniques. We investigate the case of LDPC coding scheme and its application to the PLC channel. The modulation method applied is BPSK while the transmission technique used is OFDM. We study regular LDPC codes, which is the worst case scenario concerning the performance of LDPC codes. The OFDM symbol size is initially defined at 4096 carriers, since certain characteristics of LDPC codes, like their sparse parity check matrix, imply that a larger block size improves their performance. In this paper, the coding and decoding technique have firstly been applied to a realistic power line channel. The attenuation caused by the PLC channel is derived from actual measurements. We test the performance of LDPC codes of frac12 code rate, by means of BER, compared to Reed-Solomon codes of similar code rate and convolutional codes, when they are all applied to the PLC channel and under the same conditions. Additionally, impulsive noise is generated and the system's performance is tested under the coding schemes mentioned above. Afterwards, we examine how different code rates affect the BER. All the above results are obtained via computer simulations.