Error Analysis of Receive Diversity Noncoherent PLC System in Impulsive Noise Environment

A noncoherent diversity detection power line communication (PLC) system employing multi-level amplitude-shift keying (ASK) modulation in the presence of Middleton Class-A impulsive noise is considered. Hermite numerical integration technique is used iteratively to obtain the statistics of the decision variable of an asymptotically optimal detector, which is utilized to derive series expressions for the symbol error probability (SEP). Numerical optimization of the ASK levels is done to achieve the minimum SEP, which results in the optimal solution being close to the equally spaced ASK constellation. The asymptotic optimality of the proposed detector is validated by the SEP variation with the impulsive index of the noise.