Improved blanking nonlinearity scheme for powerline communication system in impulsive noise scenarios

Signal blanking is a simple and effective method for mitigating impulsive noise (IN) in powerline communication (PLC) systems. When blanking threshold is too small, many signal samples unaffected by IN are erroneously blanked; whereas for very large threshold, IN will be overlooked and will become part of the useful signal. Both of the cases will degrade performance. In conclusion, the blanking threshold plays a significant role in the enhancement of impulsive noise reduction performance. Most previous work to find appropriate threshold is based on the characteristics of IN. In this paper, we identify a direct function relationship between the threshold and the signal power. Furthermore, as the PLC system changes, the function representation, which every of the parameters is exclusive for one kind of systems, transforms correspondingly. Next, we analyze the algorithm to obtain the signal power from the received signal impacted by impulsive noise. Finally, we study the performance of an OFDM-based PLC system. From these numerical simulation results, we conclude that if signal power is accurately calculated, the blanking threshold is optimally obtained which is valid for impulsive noise with different probabilities and different signal-to-interference ratios (SINRs).