ABSTRACT

Since their introduction during the 1960s as a solution to the issue of high-bitrate transmission over dispersive communication channels, multicarrier techniques have intensively been studied and proposed in many communication standards [1]. Well known under the acronym of OFDM, standing for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, and first envisaged for wireless transmissions, multicarrier concepts have also been proposed for digital transmission over copper wire subscriber loop (DSL) systems under the digital multitone (DMT) terminology. For 10 years, multicarrier schemes have become the basis of the physical layer of all modern communication standards, from European digital video broadcasting (DVB) to American IEEE-802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) and worldwide 4G cellular systems. In the power line communication (PLC) landscape, multicarrier schemes have also been adopted by the HomePlug Alliance and integrated as the baseline technology for the HomePlug AV specification.