Frequency-Shift Filtering for OFDM Signal Recovery in Narrowband Power Line Communications

Abstract: Power line communications (PLC) has been drawing considerable interest in recent years due to the growing interest in smart grid implementation. Specifically, network control and grid applications are allocated the frequency band of 0-500 kHz, commonly referred to as the narrowband PLC channel. This frequency band is characterized by strong periodic noise which results in low signal to noise ratio (SNR). In this work we propose a receiver which uses frequency shift filtering to exploit the cyclostationary properties of both the narrowband power line noise, as well as the information signal, digitally modulated using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. An adaptive implementation for the proposed receiver is presented as well. The proposed receiver is compared to existing receivers via analysis and simulation. The results show that the receiver proposed in this work obtains a substantial performance gain over previously proposed receivers, without requiring any coordination with the transmitter.