A DSP-Based Impulsive Noise Generator for Test Applications

Impulsive noise is known to be one of the most damaging types of wideband interference present in wireless communications systems, such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems, Bluetooth, and Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial. In order to quantify how impulsive noise degrades the quality of service (QoS) of a particular system and to evaluate the electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) requirements of a practical receiver under realistic impulsive noise conditions, it is necessary to use a flexible and modular impulsive noise generator. The primary objective of this paper is to present a low-complexity and highly flexible impulsive noise generator whose software module is implemented in a digital signal processor. In contrast to existing commercial equipment, the software implementation preserves the statistical characteristics of the measured impulsive noise parameters. In the proposed implementation, the generator presents two levels of flexibility that make it especially suitable for performing QoS tests and EMC conformance testing in realistic impulsive noise scenarios. First, the application is independent of the noise source under study. Second, the modularity of the testbed makes the generation of impulsive interference in different frequency bands possible. Experimental results confirm the feasibility and achievable performance of the proposed testbed.