Adaptive-threshold clipping for impulsive noise reduction in OFDM-based power line Communications

Abstract

Noise in the power line channel can not be described by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). This channel suffers from impulsive noise and other narrow-band interferences. Impulsive noise, in particular, can degrade the performance of OFDM-based Power Line Communication (PLC) systems significantly. Due to its simplicity, clipping is a popular technique for impulsive noise reduction. In this paper, we propose an adaptive- threshold clipping technique for impulsive noise reduction in OFDM based PLC receivers. Adaptivity in this technique is based on the minimum Bit Error Rate (BER). For our simulations, we adopt a widely accepted and practically proven channel model for broadband power line communication. Three noise scenarios, namely “heavily disturbed”, “medium disturbed” and “weakly disturbed”, that are based on practical measurements are used to investigate the performance of clipping technique before and after employing the proposed adaptive threshold by means of computer simulations.