Joint signaling strategies for approaching the capacity of twisted-pair channels

Abstract

A technique is presented for jointly optimizing the signaling in the two directions of transmission on a twisted-pair communications channel. It is then applied to twisted-pair channel models with monotonic channel response and crosstalk transfer functions. While the signaling strategy presented in this paper can achieve only a lower bound on the true channel capacity, it is a significant improvement over existing signaling schemes. In particular, in contrast with existing schemes, the maximum information rate for the joint signaling strategy increases without bound as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) approaches infinity. It is also shown through numerical results that the proposed signaling strategy generalizes naturally to more practical nonmonotonic twisted-pair channel models incorporating bridge taps and other nonidealities. Finally, the form of the optimal signaling strategy suggests a relatively straightforward implementation using multicarrier modulation.