Interference and impairments in radio communication systems due to industrial shot noise

Measurements of radio impulsive noise in industrial and urban electromagnetic environments have been conducted and its effect on radio communication systems is studied. An impulsive noise measurement system has been designed and built. It meets and improves the main features of classical equipments used to measure noise, offering both in-phase and quadrature outputs simultaneously. The system was carefully calibrated before a measurement campaign was conducted in industrial and urban environments to get impulsive noise statistics. Results show that shot noise events are less frequent in the industrial than at the urban environment, but when a noise event occurs, noise pulses appear more grouped in bursts, exhibit larger amplitude and wider bandwidth. In both cases, shot noise pulses have very high amplitude, long duration and high repetition rate, so the performance of radio communication systems could be significantly reduced in the industrial environment. The effect of the noise burst on digital radio communication systems using different types of modulation is analyzed.