In this paper, the utilisation of space-time block codes (STBC) for high-speed communications over power line channels (PLC) affected by quasi-static flat Rayleigh fading and additive man-made asynchronous impulsive noise is presented. Although the diversity order is severely reduced in a 3-phase PLC environment with respect to wireless MIMO channels, our simulation results for a rate-1 real orthogonal STBC scheme demonstrate significant gains over an uncoded system operating with the same diversity advantage. In addition, taking advantage of the spatial orthogonality provided by the power line channel, a rate-3/2 real non-orthogonal space-time block code with reduced diversity order is constructed. It is shown that using the proposed high-rate code in a power line communication system yields good performance with very high spectral efficiency.
This paper was part of a continuing investigation by the authors, with EPSRC and industrial funding, of the application of space-time multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) techniques to data communications over power lines. The importance of the paper is that it demonstrates the possibility of using spectrally efficient rate-3/2 non-orthogonal MIMO codes without sacrificing the detection simplicity of orthogonal codes. Even though the high rate scheme implies a decrease in diversity order, gains of 10dB over the uncoded case were achieved. RAE_import_type : Conference contribution RAE_uoa_type : Electrical and Electronic Engineering
