Comparison of coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing and multicarrier code division multiple access systems for power line communications

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Multicarrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) systems are comparatively evaluated for Power Line Communications (PLC) in a frequency-selective fading environment with additive colored Gaussian noise which is used to model the actual in-home powerline channel. OFDM serves as a benchmark in order to measure the performance of various MC-CDMA systems, since multicarrier modulation systems are considered the best candidate for this kind of channel. Both single-user and multi-user cases are taken into account, making use of the appropriate combiner schemes to take full advantage of each case. System efficiency is enhanced by the application of different coding techniques, a fact which shows that powerful coding can make the difference under such a hostile The authors are with the Department of Telecommunications Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Panepistimioupolis, 541 24 Thessaloniki, Greece. Tel./Fax: +302310996285.