Echo cancellation in a Power Line modem in the presence of abrupt channel variations

We discuss the effects of abrupt channel variations on the performance of echo cancellation in a Power Line Communications (PLC) scenario. Our work takes into account field measures of high voltage PLC channels and considers an adaptive Least Mean Square (LMS) echo canceller in a full-duplex communication system. We investigate the LMS convergence speed, also in the presence of impulse noise, and propose a modified adaptive LMS algorithm in order to improve the performance in the presence of abrupt echo channel variations.