  Most of the recent power line communication (PLC) systems and standards, both
narrow-band and broadband, are based on orthogonal frequency-division
multiplexing (OFDM). This multiplexing scheme however suffers from the high
peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) which can considerably impact the energy
efficiency, size and cost of PLC modems as well as cause electromagnetic
compatibility (EMC) issues. This paper investigates the performance of vector
OFDM (VOFDM), which has inherently better PAPR properties, over non-Gaussian
broadband PLC channels equipped with two nonlinear preprocessors at the
receiver. In addition, the low PAPR property of the VOFDM system is exploited
to further enhance the efficiency of the nonlinear preprocessors. The
achievable gains are studied in terms of the complementary cumulative
distribution function of the PAPR, probability of noise detection error and the
signal-to-noise ratio at the output of the nonlinear preprocessors. For
comparison's sake, the performance of conventional OFDM systems is also
presented throughout the paper. Results reveal that the proposed system is able
to provide up to 2 dB saving in the transmit power relative to the conventional
OFDM under same system conditions, which eventually also translates into a
system that is more resilient to EMC limits, reduced cost and size of PLC
modems. It is also shown that the achievable gains become more significant as
the vector block (VB) size of the VOFDM system is increased.
