Int. J. Embedded Systems, Vol. 11, No. 2, 2019 147 Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Iterative algorithms for impulsive noise reduction in OFDM-based power line communications Samir Laksir*, Abdelaali Chaoub and Ahmed Tamtaoui Department of Communications Systems, Laboratory of Telecommunications Systems, Networks and Services, National Institute of Posts and Telecommunications, 2. Av. Allal El Fassi, Rabat, Morocco Email: laksir@inpt.ac.ma Email: chaoub@inpt.ac.ma Email: tamtaoui@inpt.ac.ma *Corresponding author Abstract: Power line communications (PLC) is a technology that permits data transmission using electrical networks. In the last few years, multimedia transmission (e.g., audio, image and video) over electrical signals has received a huge amount of research interest thanks to the already-existing indoor networks. However, impulsive noise presents the most impairments in PLC systems caused by switching transients in the in-home networking. In this paper, we propose some iterative suppression algorithms based on accurate impulsive noise estimation, using an adaptive threshold under a target false alarm probability. The proposed algorithms detect the amplitudes of impulsive noise, and then cancel them iteratively from the received contaminated signal. The results show that the proposed algorithms provide noticeable improvement in terms of bit error rate, peak signal-to-noise ratio, and visual reconstructed image quality, when compared to that of the conventional methods. Keywords: power line communications; orthogonal frequency division multiplexing; multimedia transmission; impulsive noise; iterative suppression algorithms; false alarm probability; impulsive noise estimation; bit error rate; peak signal-to-noise ratio; visual image quality. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Laksir, S., Chaoub, A. and Tamtaoui, A. (2019) ‘Iterative algorithms for impulsive noise reduction in OFDM-based power line communications’, Int. J. Embedded Systems, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp.147–162. Biographical notes: Samir Laksir is a PhD student at the National Institute of Posts and Telecommunications (INPT), Morocco. He received his Master’s degree in Informatics, Signals, and Telecommunications from the Faculty of Sciences, Rabat, Morocco in 2012. His research interests are related to signal processing, quality assessment of compressed images, noise and interference mitigation in PLC systems. Abdelaali Chaoub is an Assistant Professor in Telecommunications at the National Institute of Posts and Telecommunications (INPT), Rabat, Morocco. He received his Engineering Diploma of Telecommunication from INPT in 2007 with the highest honours. He received his PhD degree from Mohammadia School of Engineers (EMI), Mohammed V-Agdal University in 2013. His research interests are related to multimedia transmission, cognitive radio networks, cooperative and mobile communications, joint source channel coding and cross layer design. He is a paper reviewer for several international journals and conferences like Computers and Electrical Engineering journal (Elsevier) and IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. Before joining INPT, he has been working as a Senior Software Architect at Alcatel-Lucent Morocco for more than eight years, where he has been involved in many projects for implementing IP telephony in large structures. Ahmed Tamtaoui is a Professor in Telecommunications, Director for Research and the Head of the Research Laboratory Telecommunications Systems, Networks and Services at the National Institute of Posts and Telecommunications (INPT) in Rabat, Morocco. He received his PhD in Signal Processing and Telecommunications from the University of Rennes I, France in 1992. In 2003, he has also obtained a PhD in Physical Sciences from the Faculty of Sciences of Rabat. His main research interests are related to the digital communications, the quality assessment of compressed images and videos, the image and video processing and the joint source channel coding.