On channel estimation for power line communication systems in the presence of impulsive noise

In this paper, two maximum-likelihood (ML) channel estimators that are robust and perform consistent channel estimation in the presence of impulsive noise (IN) for power line communication (PLC) systems are proposed and analyzed. The two estimators differ on the way they exploit the estimated IN to determine the coefficients of the channel impulse response. In the first approach, the channel estimator treats the estimated IN as a deterministic quantity; in the second as a random quantity. The performances of both estimators are analyzed and numerically evaluated. As it will be shown, between the two proposed estimators, the one that is based on the random approach outperforms the deterministic one in all typical PLC scenarios. However, the deterministic approach-based estimator can perform consistent channel estimation regardless of the IN behavior with less computational effort and becomes an efficient channel estimation strategy in situations where high computational complexity cannot be afforded.