Mitigation of Subcarrier Fading

45

 Each subchannel in multicarrier modulation is narrowband,

which mitigates the effect of delay spread(ISI).
 But each subchannel experiences flat fading leading to large
bit error rates.
 Assume that the transmitted power is Pi and the fading in that
subcarrier is i.
 The received SNR is i2Pi/N0BN.
 If i is small, the received SNR on that subchannel is small
leading to a large BER.
 Flat fading has to be compensated as it can degrade the
performance of the subchannel.
 Mitigation of Subcarrier Fading…
46

 Several techniques are employed to mitigate the

effects of fading in subchannels:
 Coding with interleaving over time and frequency
 Frequency Equalization

 Precoding

 Adaptive Loading
 Coding with Interleaving over Time
47
and Frequency
 Data bits are encoded into codewords, interleaved over both
time and frequency and transmitted over different subchannels
so that they experience independent fading.

 Subchannels with high SNR will have coded bits received

correctly and the errors associated with the few bad
subchannels can be corrected.

 This technique works well only if there is sufficient frequency

diversity across the total system bandwidth.

 If the coherence bandwidth of the channel is large, then the

fading across subchannels will be highly correlated, which will
significantly reduce the benefits of coding.
 Frequency Equalization
48

 In frequency equalization the flat fading i on the ith

subchannel is basically inverted in the receiver.

 The received signal is multiplied by 1/αi, which gives a

resultant signal power α2iPi/α2i = Pi .

 While this removes the impact of flat fading on the signal, it

enhances the noise power.

 Hence the incoming noise signal is also multiplied by 1/αi, so

the noise power becomes N0BN/α2i and the resultant SNR on the
ith subchannel after frequency equalization is the same as
before equalization.
 Precoding
49

 Precoding uses the same idea as frequency equalization,

except that the fading is inverted at the transmitter instead
of at the receiver.

 This technique requires the transmitter to have knowledge of

the subchannel flat fading gains αi (i = 0, . . . ,N −1), which
must be obtained through estimation.

 If the desired received signal power in the ith subchannel is Pi

and if the channel introduces a flat fading gain αi in the ith
subchannel, then under precoding the power transmitted in the
ith subchannel is Pi/α2i .
 Precoding
50

 The subchannel signal is corrupted by flat fading with gain αi,

so the received signal power is Piα2 i /α2i = Pi, as desired.
 The channel inversion takes place at the transmitter instead
of the receiver, so the noise power remains N0BN.
 There are two main problems with precoding in a wireless
setting.
 Precoding is basically channel inversion and inversion is not power
efficient in fading channels. An infinite amount of power is needed
for channel inversion on a Rayleigh fading channel.
 The other problem with precoding is the need for accurate channel
estimates at the transmitter, which are difficult to obtain in a rapidly
fading channel.
 Adaptive Loading
51

 Adaptive loading is based on the adaptive modulation techniques.

 It is commonly used on slowly changing channels where channel
estimates at the transmitter can be obtained fairly easily.
 The basic idea is to vary the data rate and power assigned to each
subchannel relative to that subchannel gain.
 As in the case of precoding, this requires knowledge of the
subchannel fading {αi, i = 0, . . . ,N −1} at the transmitter.
 In adaptive loading, power and rate on each subchannel are
adapted to maximize the total rate of the system using adaptive
modulation.
 Adaptive Loading…
52

 The capacity of a multicarrier system with N independent

subchannels of bandwidth BN and subchannel gain {αi, i =
0, . . . ,N −1} is given by

where P is the total power.

 The power allocation Pi that maximizes this expression is given

by equation
 Adaptive Loading…
53

for some cutoff value γc, where γi = α2iP/N0BN.

 The equation for capacity then becomes

 On applying a variable-rate variable-power modulation to the

subchannels, then the total data rate is given by

where K = −1.5/ln(5Pb) for Pb the desired target BER in each

subchannel.
 Adaptive Loading…
54

 The optimal power allocation becomes,

and corresponding data rate is

where γK is a cutoff fade depth dictated by the power constraint

P and K.
 Discrete Implementation of
55
Multicarrier Modulation
 The requirement for separate modulators and demodulators on
each subchannel made the multicarrier modulation system
complex.

 It was found that multicarrier modulation could be implemented

using DFT and IDFT.

 OFDM is the implementation of multicarrier modulation using

the DFT and IDFT.
 Orthogonal Frequency Division
56
Multiplexing(OFDM)
 Orthogonal Frequency Division
57
Multiplexing(OFDM)…
 The input data stream is modulated by a QAM modulator,
resulting in a complex symbol stream X[0],X[1], . . . ,X[N − 1].
 This symbol stream is passed through a serial-to-parallel
converter, whose output is a set of N parallel QAM symbols X[0], .
. . ,X[N −1] corresponding to the symbols transmitted over each of
the subcarriers.
 In order to generate s(t), IDFT is performed on these N symbols,
which is efficiently implemented using the IFFT algorithm.
 The IFFT yields the OFDM symbol consisting of the sequence x[n]
= x[0], . . . , x[N −1] of length N, where
 Orthogonal Frequency Division
58
Multiplexing(OFDM)…
 This sequence corresponds to samples of the multicarrier signal:
the multicarrier signal consists of linearly modulated subchannels.

 The cyclic prefix is then added to the OFDM symbol, and the
resulting time samples . . . , [N−1] = x[N−μ], . . ,
x[0], . . . , x[N−1] are ordered by the parallel-to-serial converter
and passed through a D/A converter, resulting in the baseband
OFDM signal (t), which is then upconverted to frequency f0.

 The transmitted signal is filtered by the channel impulse response

and corrupted by additive noise, resulting in the received signal
r(t).
 Orthogonal Frequency Division
59
Multiplexing(OFDM)…
 This signal is down-converted to baseband and filtered to remove
the high-frequency components.
 The A/D converter samples the resulting signal to obtain y[n] =
[n] h[n]+ν[n],−μ ≤ n ≤ N −1, where h[n] is the discrete-time
equivalent lowpass impulse response of the channel.
 The prefix of y[n] consisting of the first μ samples is then removed.
 This results in N time samples whose DFT is Y [i] = H[i]X[i].
 These time samples are serial-to-parallel converted and passed
through an FFT.
 The FFT output is parallel to- serial converted and passed through a
QAM demodulator to recover the original data.
 Orthogonal Frequency Division
60
Multiplexing(OFDM)…
 The OFDM system effectively decomposes the wideband channel
into a set of narrowband orthogonal subchannels with a different
QAM symbol sent over each subchannel.
 Knowledge of the channel gains H[i], i = 0, . . . ,N −1, is not needed
for this decomposition.
 The demodulator can use the channel gains to recover the original
QAM symbols by dividing out these gains: X[i] = Y [i]/H [i]. This
process is called frequency equalization.
 Frequency equalization leads to noise enhancement because the
noise in the ith subchannel is also scaled by 1/H [i].
 While the effect of flat fading on X[i] is removed by this
equalization, its received SNR is unchanged.
 The Cyclic Prefix
61

◻ Cyclic prefix is added to create a guard interval between the

symbols. (Each OFDM symbol preceded by a copy of end part
of symbol)

◻ At the receiver, an FFT block is used to process the received signal

and bring it into the frequency domain

◻ The receiver then multiplies (i.e., correlates) the incoming signal

by the known set of sinusoids to recover the original
set of bits sent. (demodulation)
62
Addition of a Guard Period to an OFDM
Symbol
• Copy of the last symbol is inserted to
the beginning – Cyclic Prefix
• Copy is inserted for ease of
convolution operations.
• Converts linear convolution to
circular convolution

RAJAGIRI SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY, KOCHI 19

 Problems
64

Q) Consider an OFDM system with total bandwidth B = 1MHz

assuming β = ε = 0. A single-carrier system would have symbol
time Ts = 1/B = 1 μs. The channel has a maximum delay spread
of Tm = 5 μs, so with Ts = 1μs and Tm = 5μs there would clearly
be severe ISI. Assume an OFDM system with MQAM modulation
applied to each subchannel. To keep the overhead small, the
OFDM system uses N = 128 subcarriers to mitigate ISI. So TN =
NTs = 128 μs. The length of the cyclic prefix is set to μ = 8 >
Tm/Ts to ensure no ISI between OFDM symbols. For these
parameters, find the subchannel bandwidth, the total transmission
time associated with each OFDM symbol and the overhead of
the cyclic prefix.
 Problems
65

Solution:
Subchannel bandwidth, BN = 1/TN = 1/128s = 7.812 kHz
The total transmission time for each OFDM symbol is
T = TN + μTs = 128 + 8 = 136 μs.
The overhead associated with the cyclic prefix is 8/128 which is
6.25%.
 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio
66

 The peak-to-average power ratio (PAR) is an important

attribute of a communication system.
 It is desirable to have the average and peak values be as
close together as possible in order for the power amplifier
to operate at maximum efficiency.
 A high PAR requires high resolution for the receiver A/D
converter, since the dynamic range of the signal is much
larger for high-PAR signals.
 High-resolution A/D conversion places a complexity and
power burden on the receiver front end.
 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio…
67

 The PAR of a continuous-time signal is given by

and for a discrete-time signal is given by

 Consider the time-domain samples that are output from the

IFFT:
 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio…
68

 If N is large then the central limit theorem is applicable, and

x[n] are zero-mean complex Gaussian random variables.
 For x[n] complex Gaussian, the envelope of the OFDM signal is
Rayleigh distributed with variance σ2, and the phase of the
signal is uniform.
 The probability that the PAR exceeds a threshold P0 = σ20 /σ2
is given by

 PAR grows with the number of subcarriers.

 Consider N Gaussian independent and identically distributed
random variables xn (0 ≤ n ≤ N −1) with zero mean and unit
power.
 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio…
69

 The average signal power En[|x[n]|2] is then

 The maximum value occurs when all the xi add coherently, in

which case

 Hence the maximum PAR is N for N subcarriers.

 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio…
70

 In practice, full coherent addition of all N symbols is highly

improbable and so the observed PAR is typically less than N
usually by many decibels.
 PAR increases approximately linearly with the number of
subcarriers.
 So even though it is desirable to have N as large as possible in
order to keep the overhead associated with the cyclic prefix
down, a large PAR is an important penalty that must be paid
for large N.
 Peak-to-Average Power Ratio…
71

 The PAR of OFDM signals can be reduced by the following

techniques:
 Clipping the OFDM signal above some threshold
 Peak cancellation with a complementary signal
 Allowing nonlinear distortion from the power amplifier
 Special coding techniques