XPIC, or cross-polarization interference cancelling technology, is an algorithm to suppress mutual interference between two received streams in a
Polarization-division multiplexing communication system.
The cross-polarization interference canceller (known as XPIC) is a signal processing technique implemented on the demodulated received signals at the baseband level. It is typically necessary in
Polarization Division Multiplexing systems: the data sources to be transmitted are coded and mapped into
QAM modulating symbols at the system's symbol rate and
upconverted to a carrier frequency, generating two radio streams radiated by a single dual-polarized antenna (see feed pattern of
Parabolic antenna). A corresponding dual-polarized antenna is located at the remote site and connected to two receivers, which
downconvert the radio streams into baseband signals (BB H, BB V).
This multiplexing/demultiplexing technique is based on the expected discrimination between the two orthogonal polarizations (XPD):
* an ideal, infinite XPD of the whole system guarantees that each signal at the receivers contains only the signal generated by the corresponding transmitter (plus any thermal noise);
* any real, finite, level of XPD instead manifests itself as a partial recombination between the two signals, so that the receivers observe an interference due to the cross-polarization leakage. Some of the factors causing such cross-polarization interference are listed in
Polarization-Division Multiplexing.

As a practical consequence, at the receiving site the two streams are received with a residual mutual interference. In many practical cases, especially for high-level M-
QAM modulations, the communication system cannot tolerate the experienced levels of cross-polarization interference and an improved suppression is necessary. The two received polarizations at the antenna outputs, normally linear horizontal H and vertical V, are routed each to a receiver whose baseband output is further processed by an ad-hoc cross-polarization cancelling scheme, commonly implemented as a digital stage. The XPIC algorithm attains the correct reconstruction of H by summing V to H to cancel any residual interference, and vice versa.

The cancelling process is typically implemented using two blocks: a baseband
equalizer and the baseband XPIC. The output from the latter is subtracted from the former and then sent to the decision stage, responsible for yielding the estimation of the data stream. The equalization and XPIC blocks are normally adaptive for a correct tracking of the time-variant channel transfe