Modelling of the Powerline Communication Bursty Impulsive Noise

Degradation of the transmitted signal and the reduced reliability of the powerline communication (PLC) channel due to impulsive noise bursts are well-documented in numerous studies. As a result, to develop mitigation strategies for this troublesome noise, its characteristics need to be examined and modelled. In this paper, the powerline communication (PLC) channel is viewed as a single infinite server queue where the PLC noise generated from different sources is transmitted to the receiver on a first-come- first-serve basis as either background noise, single impulse noise or impulse noise bursts. These impulse noise bursts are thought to result from the overlap in the occurrence of high amplitude single impulse noise. Consequently, this paper proposes modelling the distribution of the duration and inter-arrival times of successive PLC impulsive noise bursts as well as the distribution of the number of single impulses present in a noise burst. The performance of the model is then validated using measurements taken from various indoor networks where the impulsive noise bursts are observed to exhibit queueing properties.