Performance Analysis of 16-QAM using OFDM for Transmission of Data over Power Lines

AbstractThe robustness of multiple access schemes such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as needed for the wireless communication system is well proven. There is now an increasing demand to transmit digital video signals and other digital information in an indoor environment. A solution to avoid the prohibitive cost of installing dedicated wires for this application is to transmit data over the power line. As the medium voltage and low voltage power lines transmit such high frequency communication signals, these signals undergo attenuation due to line loss and impedance mismatch because of branches and loads. Thus a signal which is received at the receiver end is not a replica of transmitter end signal, signifying of symbol error. In order to understand more about OFDM technique of transmission of data, in this paper we have carried out the performance analysis of transmission of digital data over indoor power lines using OFDM. The simulation results of the performance analysis show that 16-QAM symbol constellation is fully recovered and symbol error can be reduced significantly by suppressing some weak carriers