A Novel Impulsive Noise Suppression and Data Recovery Method for ACO-OFDM-Based Hybrid PLC-VLC Systems

Abstract

Hybrid Power Line Communication (PLC)-Visible Light Communication (VLC) (HPV) systems are emerging as a cost-effective and efficient solution to enable high-speed communication. However, the random connection of electrical devices to the power line introduces Impulsive Noise (IN) in the PLC channel, which significantly degrades the Bit Error Rate (BER) of HPV systems. Existing studies have primarily focused on mitigating IN by setting the IN signals to either zero or a threshold value after the PLC stage. While previous studies have progressed in reducing noise, they have neglected the critical aspect of restoring the corrupted information signal that leads to data loss and increased BER. This study offers a novel Asymmetrical Recovery Filter (ARF) method to address the IN problem in HPV systems using Asymmetrically-Clipped Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ACO-OFDM). The ARF method not only suppresses the IN but also recovers impulsively corrupted data without causing signal loss, significantly enhancing the overall system BER performance. By leveraging ACO-OFDM's naturally occurring different forms of identical signals, the ARF method avoids additional bandwidth usage during recovery and achieves this with a low-computational algorithm. The ARF method's robustness is demonstrated through extensive simulations in both IN-free and IN-contaminated scenarios, outperforming existing signal lossy IN suppression methods.