Impulsive Noise Mitigation in Digital Subscriber Lines: The State-of-the-Art and Research Opportunities

DSL relying on twisted pairs and on home-passed fiber network is still widely deployed in a large part of the world. However, its performance is severely restricted by the occurrence of impulsive noise. In this article, we present both the state-of-the-art and open research opportunities for impulsive noise mitigation in DSL. Its necessity is first discussed by briefly characterizing impulsive noise and outlining the deleterious effects imposed on the system. Then, the state-of-the-art is discussed by categorizing the mitigation techniques into those at the transmitter as well as into parametric and non-parametric mitigation solutions at the receiver, followed by a detailed comparison in terms of mitigation efficiency, spectral efficiency, computational complexity and processing delay. Open research opportunities are discussed from the perspective of noise modeling for parametric mitigation, advanced mitigation design and machine-learning aided mitigation.