A Channel Estimation Algorithm for Impulse Noise Suppression in PLC System

Channel estimation in power line communication (PLC) systems based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing(OFDM) is severely affected by impulse noise. As such, many impulsive noise(IN) suppression techniques have been proposed in the literature, the most common of which is the blanking technique. The conventional way to implement this technique, however, requires prior knowledge about the IN characteristics to identify the optimal blanking threshold(OBT). for the problem of conventional optimal blanking(COB) which requires prior information of noise and missed detection of IN, a new threshold criterion of hybrid method is proposed to simplify threshold acquisition and improve the possibility of successful detection of IN. The simulation results reveal that the proposed method is able to improve the accuracy of the channel estimation in the impulsive noise environment of the PLC system, as well as improving the symbol error rate performance.