A system for detecting and correcting impulse noise present on an input data
signal
includes an impulse detector module receiving an input data signal and producing
as output an correction enable signal indicating when an impulse correction is
required. An impulse corrector module receives the input data signal and a correction
enable signal and produces a corrected data signal, e.g., having the impulse canceled
or blanked, as output. A reliability estimator and selector module receives the
corrected data signal and the input data signal and selects as output the input
signal which is more reliable. In one embodiment, the impulse detector includes
first and second complementary impulse detectors, the outputs of which are analyzed
by an enable and correction module to produce an impulse detection signal with
improved accuracy. Preferably, the enable and correction module also indicates
the most appropriate type of impulse correction in accordance with the detection
signals from the complementary detectors. A novel system and method of detecting
impulses based on Gram Schmidt techniques is also presented. In this method, one
or more channels of a multi-channel data signal are kept free of data. When a whitening
filter is applied, impulses on these quiet channels are emphasized. The Gram Schmidt
technique exploits this fact to provide for improved impulse detection. The system
can be modified to detect other types of low dimensionality noise.
