Recurrent neural equalization for communication channels in impulsive noise environments

In some communication systems, the transmitted signal is contaminated by impulsive noise with a non-Gaussian distribution. Non-Gaussian noise causes significant performance degradation to communication receivers. In this paper, we apply a recurrent neural equalizer to impulsive noise channels, for which the performance of neural network equalizers has never been evaluated. This new application is motivated from the fact that the unscented Kalman filter (UKF), which is suited for training of the recurrent neural equalizer, provides a higher accuracy than the extended Kalman filter (EKF) in capturing the statistical characteristics for non-Gaussian random variables. The performance of the recurrent neural equalizer is evaluated for impulsive noise channels through Monte Carlo simulations. The results support the superiority of the UKF to the EKF in compensating the effect of non-Gaussian impulsive noise.