Bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding in impulsive noise

Power-line communications (PLC) suffers performance degradation due mainly to impulsive noise interference generated by electrical appliances. This paper considers the application of bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) in Class-A impulsive noise environment to improve the spectral efficiency and error performance of PLC. In particular, the optimal soft-output demodulator and its suboptimal version are presented for an additive Class-A noise channel so that iterative demodulation and decoding can be performed at the receiver. The effect of signal mapping on the error performance of BICM-ID systems in impulsive noise is investigated, with both computer simulation and a tight error bound on the asymptotic performance. Extrinsic information transfer chart analysis is carried out to illustrate the convergence properties of different mappings. The superior performance of BICM-ID compared to the orthogonal frequency-division multiplex technique is also clearly demonstrated.