Performance Improvement of FFT-OFDM for Impulsive Noise Communications Channels Using Wavelet Transforms and Noise Mitigation Methods

Performance of Power Line Communications (PLC) and Underwater Acoustic Communications (UWA) Channels is affected by limiting factors of fading, attenuation, multipath propagation and impulsive noise. Classically, Fourier-Based Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation is utilized to overcome these limitations. However, this modulation suffers from some drawbacks like low spectral efficiency and high peak to average power ratio. Due capability of wavelet-based OFDM in overcoming these limitations and also lack of sufficient knowledge about its performance in impulsive noise channels, this paper is devoted to suggestion of wavelet-based OFDM for PLC and UWA Channels and evaluates its performance for different wavelet families and in the presence of impulsive noise mitigation methods and general models of channel and noise. The results demonstrate that wavelet-based OFDM not only increases spectrum efficiency in comparison with Fourier-Based OFDM, but also provides better performance in the terms of average bit error rate and high peak to average power ratio.