A Comparison of ICF and Companding for Impulsive Noise Mitigation in Powerline Communication Systems

In future smart cities, smart grid technologies which are usually enabled by Powerline Communication (PLC) techniques are required. However, data transmission over powerline channel traverses a non-Gaussian media due to the presence of Impulsive Noise (IN) operating at the frequencies of PLC system which can be deployed using the IEEE 1901, that uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). These OFDM signals have asymmetric amplitude distribution, which makes it difficult to identify and mitigate the IN presence. Converting the amplitude distribution to a uniform distribution can enhance the ability to mitigate IN when nonlinear IN mitigation techniques such as blanking is applied. In this study, we apply Iterative Clipping and Filtering (ICF) and companding schemes which are Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) reduction techniques to enable symmetric amplitude distribution of the OFDM signals. With an optimization search for the optimal blanking amplitude for the two PAPR reduction schemes. Results show that companding scheme achieves 4dB gain in terms of received signal-to-noise ratio better than ICF after the blanking was used to remove the IN