LF receiver designs for impulsive noise

Radio receivers are typically designed under the assumption that a white Gaussian noise process is the main source of trouble. Impulsive noise is usually handled by clipping in an attempt to make the noise look Gaussian again. The author explores alternative receivers designed specifically to combat impulsive noise. Digitized noise waveforms recorded at two million samples per second are the primary test probes for receivers implemented in software. It is shown that, in an environment dominated by impulsive noise, wide filters in the receiver improve performance more than enough to make up for the added difficulties with adjacent channel interference. Blanking appears to be far more effective than clipping, with the added advantage of not spreading adjacent channels into each other as clipping does. A receiver with wide filters and noise blanking will perform much better than a highly selective receiver during storm conditions