Turbo Coded OFDM / QAM Scheme for a High - Speed Power Line Communication System

In this paper, performance of a turbo-coded OFDM system is analyzed and simulated in a power line communication channel. Since the power line communication system typically operates in a hostile environment, turbo code has been employed to enhance reliability of transmitted data. The performance is evaluated in terms of bit error probability. As turbo decoding algorithms, MAP (maximum a posteriori), Max-Log-MAP, and SOVA (soft decision Viterbi output) algorithms are chosen and their performances are compared. From simulation results, it is demonstrated that Max-Log-MAP algorithm is promising in terms of performance and complexity. It is shown that performance is substantially improved by increasing the number of iterations and interleaver length of a turbo encoder. The results in this paper can be applied to OFDM-based high-speed power line communication systems.