Channel coding provides numerous advantages to digital communications. One of such advantages is error correcting capabilities. This, however, comes at the expense of coding rate, which is a function of the codebook’s cardinality |C| or number of coded information bits and the codeword length M. In order to achieve high coding rate, we hereby report a channel coding approach that is capable of error correction under power line communications (PLC) channel conditions, with permutation coding as the coding scheme of choice. The approach adopts the technique of unequal error correction for binary codes, but with the exception that non-binary permutation codes are employed here. As such, certain parts of the information bits are coded with permutation symbols, while transmitting other parts uncoded. Comparisons with other conventional permutation codes are presented, with the proposed scheme exhibiting a relatively competitive performance in terms of symbol error rate.

Arriving at a good combination of coding and modulation schemes that can achieve good error correction constitutes a challenge in digital communication systems. In this work, we explore the combination of permutation coding (PC) and pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) for mitigating channel errors in the presence of background noise and jitter. Since PAM is characterised with bi-polar constellations, Euclidean distance is a good choice for predicting the performance of such coded modulation setup. In order to address certain challenges facing PCs, we therefore introduce injections in the coding system, together with a modified form of PAM system. This modification entails constraining the PAM constellations to the size of the codeword’s symbol. The results obtained demonstrate the strength of the modified coded PAM system over the conventional PC coded PAM system.