Analysis and modeling of impulsive noise in broad-band powerline communications

Abstract

Contrary to many other communication channels, the powerline channel does not represent an additive white Gaussian noise environment. In the frequency range from several hundred kilohertz up to 20 MHz, it is mostly dominated by narrow-band interference and impulsive noise. In particular, the impulsive noise introduces significant time variance into the powerline channel. Spectral analysis and time-domain analysis of impulsive noise give some figures of the power spectral density as well as distributions of amplitude, impulse width, and "interarrival" times in typical powerline scenarios. Furthermore, the impulse rate and the disturbance ratio of the scenarios are examined. Finally, a statistical model of the time behavior of random impulsive noise based on a partitioned Markov chain is developed, which is suitable for implementation in computer-based communication system simulations.