Using polarization diversity to detect and analyze impulsive noise

When measuring impulsive noise on a radio communication channel, other noises and signals come up mixed with it. As impulsive noise is a high amplitude electromagnetic event, the usual method to spot it is to set an amplitude threshold so as to considering impulsive noise arrival whenever the received signal exceeds the threshold. However, weak amplitude impulsive noise would not be detected using this procedure, besides, occasional surging of other signals would be erroneously considered as being impulsive noise. In this paper we present an impulsive noise measurement procedure which consists of taking radio signal samples from both horizontal and vertical polarizations simultaneously; a detecting threshold is set in one polarization, when this threshold is exceeded the impulsive noise is analyzed in the other one.