Cell interleaving against impulsive noise in OFDM

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique which is very sensitive to impulsive noise (IN). In this paper, we research the behavior of the OFDM based broadcasting system Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) against this kind of noise in function of its different transmission modes and interleaving options. This research involves an experiment in which a real DRM signal is modulated, transmitted, received, and demodulated. The results quantitatively show the improvement when deep cell interleaving is used, and also the little influence that transmission mode has on the behavior of DRM against IN. In this paper, it is also explained in a mathematical way why it is advisable to perform deep cell interleaving between several OFDM symbols and not within only one, in order to minimize the effect of IN.