Impulsive noise remotion by inspection of the masked tones at PLC receivers

Impulsive noise (IN) consists of sudden short time peaks of high power which appear in communication channels from time to time. The IN influence on Power Line Communications (PLC) has been proved to be very harmful. A particular feature of PLC standards is the prohibition of signal power transmission at the frequency bands used by radio amateurs, which are referred to as the masked tones; however when IN arrives at the receiver, it is expected some IN leakage into these masked tones in the same way as into the rest of the PLC spectrum. We present an IN cancelling method which removes the IN from the received signal by analyzing the IN components at the masked tones.