Sinai University

Electronics and communication Department

Faculty of Engineering
Design and implementation of OFDM
transmitter and receiver
 Introduction
01

Orthogonal frequency division

02 multiplexing

FFT and IFFT

03
VHDL and FPGA
04

Realization schemes
05

Conclusion and future work

06
Our Team
Khaled Awad Elsayed
Sara Ahmed mohamed
Moustafa Eid Salama
Amal Ahmed Eid
Abdulrahman Mohamed

Supervised by:

Prof.Dr. Mohamed Samy

Abo Elsoud
Introduction
NO LIMITS
• It is dangerous to put limits on wireless
data rates, considering economic
constraints, Data rates are really what
broadband is about.
• capacity is one of the major issues to be
developed due to the foreseen increase
in demand for new services
The feature
• OFDM has promising future in wireless
networks and mobile communications.
Growth in number of worldwide customers
for wireless networks and ever-increasing
demand for large bandwidth has given birth
to this technology. OFDM is already playing
an important role in WLAN and will be part
of MAN too. In coming years, it will surely
dominate the communication industry.
OFDM
• The principal goals of modern wireless communication
systems are to achieve high data rate, overcoming the
limitation of bandwidth, give more reliability, and dealing
well in complex wireless environment.
• OFDM is one of the transmission techniques that
provides parallel data transmission over parallel
orthogonal frequencies which ensure speed transmission
and effectively using of the available bandwidth then high
efficiency is obtained. It has other properties such as an
adding of guard interval in OFDM symbols for reduce the
interferences caused by the multi path propagation
APPLICATION
• The kid of wireless communication is experiencing
golden days due to various wireless standards such as
Wi-Fi, Wimax and LTE. These standards operate within
lower microwave range (2-4GHz). Due to intrinsic
propagation losses at these frequencies and problem of
multipath fading, it was necessary to provide a solution
which can offer robustness in multipath environments
and against narrowband interference and is efficient.
OFDM, in all this aspects, proves to be an apt
candidate by not only providing high-capacity, high-
speed wireless broadband multimedia networks but
also coexists with current and future systems.
IMPLEMENTATION
• OFDM is accomplished with digital signal
processing (DSP). We can program the IFFT and
FFT math functions on any fast PC, but it is usually
done with a DSP IC or an appropriately programmed
FPGA or some hardwired digital logic. With today’s
super-fast chips, even complex math routines like
FFT are relatively easy to implement. In brief, we
can put it all on a single chip. Recent advances in
the Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) technology
enable making of high-speed chips that can
perform large size FFT at an affordable price.
THE TRANSMITTER AND
RECEIVER
• The transmitter section takes a serial data bit stream and splits it into N
parallel bit streams, where N is the number of the IFFT points. Each bit stream
is mapped into output symbols constellations (complex data) to be modulated
onto a unique orthogonal subcarrier and combined together using IDFT
(IFFT) yielding the time domain output samples. IFFT converts each N
parallel input symbols to N parallel output samples, each input symbol or
output sample has a period of Ts seconds, each N parallel output samples
forms one OFDM symbol (in time domain) with a period of Ts seconds,
because the N samples are in parallel.
• The receiver section performs the inverse of the transmitter function, first the
RF received signal is stepped down to get the baseband OFDM signal. This
signal is converted from a serial to parallel form then, the guard period is
removed and the DFT converts the time domain samples back to frequency
domain representations (output symbols constellations). Finally, the de-
mapping signal block recovers the N parallel bit stream, which is converted
back to the original serial data stream by the parallel to serial converter.
IFFT/FFT
• The ability to define the signal in the frequency
domain, in software on VLSI processors, and
to generate the signal using the IFT is the key
to its current popularity. The use of the reverse
process in the receiver is essential if cheap
and reliable receivers are to be readily
available. At OFDM transmitter, the IFFT treats
the input symbols (symbols constellations) as
though they are in the frequency-domain, and
brings them into the time domain.
Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing
 Introduction

Advantages
Orthogonality Defined
& Disadvantages

The problem of Signal

Guard Period
& how to solve it
Introduction of OFDM

• What is OFDM?
• We can make ashortcut of Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing to be OFDM.
• OFDM: is a type of digital modulation, a method of
encoding digital data on multiple carrier frequencies.

• Example: Rectangular waveform →Sinc spectrum.

Basic Principles of OFDM

• (OFDM) is very similar to the well known and widely used technique of
(FDM).

• A example of FDM is the use of different frequencies for each FM radio

stations.

• OFDM is different from FDM in several ways.

1. Digital broadcasting.
2. Controlled the interference between subcarriers.
Orthogonality Defined
• Orthogonality: is a property that allows multiple information signals to be
transmitted perfectly over a common channel.
• OFDM achieves orthogonality in the frequency domain by allocating each of
the separate information signals onto different subcarriers.
• The subcarriers are orthogonal to each other. Sets of functions are
orthogonal to each other if they match the conditions at the 1 st equation.

• The 2nd Equation shows a set of orthogonal sinusoidal, which represent the
subcarriers for an unmodulated real OFDM signal.

f0 is the carrier spacing. k is the number of carriers, kfo is

transmission bandwidth.
Guard Period

• For a given system bandwidth the symbol rate for an OFDM signal is much lower
than a single carrier transmission scheme. Like BPSK

• Multipath propagation is caused by the radio transmission signal reflecting off

objects in the propagation environment, such as walls, buildings, mountains, etc.

• The effect of ISI on an OFDM signal can be further improved by the addition of a
guard period to the start of each symbol.

• Ts=TG + TFFT
• Ts is the total length of the symbol in samples.
• TG is the length of the guard period in samples.
• TFFT is the size of the IFFT used to generate the OFDM signal.
The Problem of the Signal and how to solve it ?
• Multi-Path Effect :
• The most deteriorate of communication part is multipath.

• Where reflections are present and signals arrive at the receiver from the transmitter via a
variety of paths.

• The solution is OFDM.

• The OFDM increasing using some technique like MIMO.

Con. The Problem of the Signal and how to solve it ?

• Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) :

• The delayed version of a symbol overlaps with the adjacent

symbol.

• One simple solution to avoid this is to introduce a guard-band.

• The perfect solution is cyclic prefix.

Advantages & Disadvantages of OFDM

• Advantages: • Disadvantages:

•High peak to average power ratio.

• Immunity to selective fading.

• Sensitive to carrier offset and drift.

•Resilience to interference.
• Need IFFT at transmitter, FFT
•Resilient to ISI. receiver.

•Resilient to narrow-band effects.

FFT and IFFT
IFFT and FFT
DFT Definition:
• In mathematics, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) converts a finite sequence
of equally-spaced samples of a function into a same-length sequence of
equally-spaced samples of the discrete-time Fourier transform (DTFT).
• FFT:
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the
discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse
(IDFT).

• FFT Application :
The FFT has lots of applications and is used extensively in audio
processing, radar, sonar and software defined radio to name but a
few.
FFT and IFFT Formula:
FFT Example :
IFFT:
IFFT is a fast algorithm to perform inverse (or backward) Fourier
transform (IDFT), which undoes the process of DFT. IDFT of a sequence
{Fn } that can be defined as:

If an IFFT is performed on a complex FFT result computed by Origin, this

will in principle transform the FFT result back to its original data set.
IFFT (Inverse FFT) converts a signal from the frequency domain to the
time domain.
IFFT Example:
VHDL and FPGA
VHDL
• This chapter discuss the tools to implement the OFDM
transceiver on FPGA hardware.

• VHDL Definition

• The VHDL is an acronym for the VHSIC (Very High-Speed

Integrated Circuit) Hardware Description Language. Literally it
means to put the hardware into IC through a language at a
fast speed.
• it is not a language for software design but a language for
hardware configuration.
• To configure hardware means to represent a circuit through a
language.
• The research on the VHDL began in the early 1980’s upon the
request of the Department of Defense (DoD).
VHDL also involves some disadvantages

• VHDL has a complicated language because it was developed

by engineers. Therefore, it may require a lot of time and
efforts to understand and use it easily.

• The VHDL is the language designed to describe hardware and

perform its simulation. So, it may contain some disadvantages
against design itself. Therefore, it is hard to verify timing and
calculate a critical path in the synthesis and simulation
processes.

• Altera & Xilinx synthesis tools do not support all the VHDL
sentences by default and support them only some of them.
Therefore, it is impossible to control the PLD by using all the
VHDL sentences.
Xilinx ISE Design Software

• Xilinx ISE (Integrated Synthesis Environment) is a software tool

produced by Xilinx for synthesis and analysis of HDL designs

• enabling the developer to synthesize ("compile") their designs,

perform timing analysis, examine RTL diagrams, simulate a design's
reaction to different stimuli, and configure the target device with the
programmer.

• tightly-coupled to the architecture of such chips, and cannot be used

with FPGA products from other vendors.
Difference between FPGA and ASIC

• The FPGA is an acronym for ( Field Programable Gate Array is

an integrated circuit design to be configured by a customer.

• FPGA configuration is generally specified using hardware

description language ( HDL ).

• FPGA contain an array of programmable logic blocks and

hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects that allow the blocks
to be wired together
Difference between FPGA and ASIC
• The ASIC is an acronym for ( Application-specific Integrated
Circuit. It is an integrated circuit that is specially built for a
specific application or purpose.

• ASIC improve speed because it is specifically designed to do

one thing and it does one thing will. It can also be made
smaller and use less electricity.

• It can be more expensive to design and manufacture,

particularly if only a few units are needed.
Realization
Schemes
Digital Design steps
• Design
• Simulation
• Synthesis
• Place & Route
• Program Device
Transmitter Scheme
Receiver Scheme
Mapper Module
Serial to parallel Module
IFFT Module
Parallel to serial Module
FFT Module
Results from IFFT Module
results of IFFT
input output

real imaginary real imaginary

xn0 6 0 24 0
xn1 3 0 16 0
xn2 4 0 -2 -2
xn3 7 0 -2 2
xn4 1 0 3 -1
xn5 0 0 3 -5
xn6 2 0 3 5
xn7 1 0 3 1
       
xn0 1 0 23 0
xn1 5 0 7 0
xn2 2 0 -3 0
xn3 7 0 -3 0
xn4 4 0 2 -3
xn5 0 0 -10 -7
xn6 1 0 -10 7
xn7 3 0 2 3
       
xn0 4 0 28 0
xn1 7 0 2 0
xn2 3 0 7 -9
xn3 1 0 7 9
xn4 0 0 -6 1
xn5 2 0 0 3
xn6 6 0 0 -3
xn7 5 0 -6 -1
Results from FFT Module
results of FFT
input ouput

real imaginary real imaginary

xn0 24 0 6 0
xn1 16 0 3 0
xn2 -2 -2 4 0
xn3 -2 2 7 0
xn4 3 -1 1 0
xn5 3 -5 0 0
xn6 3 5 2 0
xn7 3 1 1 0
       
xn0 23 0 1 0
xn1 7 0 5 0
xn2 -3 0 2 0
xn3 -3 0 7 0
xn4 2 -3 4 0
xn5 -10 -7 0 0
xn6 -10 7 1 0
xn7 2 3 3 0
       
xn0 28 0 4 0
xn1 2 0 7 0
xn2 7 -9 3 0
xn3 7 9 1 0
xn4 -6 1 0 0
xn5 0 3 2 0
xn6 0 -3 6 0
xn7 -6 -1 5 0
 Chapter 6
Conclusion &
Future works
conclusions
• OFDM is clearly superior to its competitors
in terms of technology and performance

• It is the technology that deals better with

typical wireless communications channel

• Added to this, its easy extension to MIMO

systems currently allows 4G networks to
considerably increase their transmission
capacity, by using massive MIMO and mm-
wave technology.
Main aim of this paper is hardware
implementation of OFDM system on
FPGA:

• The design implementation is done using

(VHDL) coding ,the Fast Fourier Transform
(FFT) and Inverse Fast Fourier Transform

• because they offer better speed with less

computational time.
o These methods requires the odd and even
samples inputs are process separately before
they are combine to give the final output.

o The advantage of increasing the subcarrier is

the increased spectral efficiency of the
system. Results show that the system is
working correctly.

o By increasing the number of subcarriers and

by making highly pipelined architecture for
IFFT and FFT the system performance could
be improved in terms of processing time
required in transmitter and receiver.
Future works
• In OFDM system, many digital data are
transmitted as sub-carriers, all sub-carriers
are orthogonal to each other.

• OFDM also has advantages of saving of

bandwidth, easy to implement modulation
and demodulation, easy equalization,
protection against Inter Symbol
Interference (ISI)
o However with all these advantages, there is a major
o
o disadvantage that it has large Peak-to-Average Power
Ratio (PAPR)

o Large PAPR value makes system performance quite

sensitive to distortion introduced by nonlinear
amplifier, caused by nonlinear components.

o These nonlinear components make the Bit Error Rate

(BER) performance degraded

o A proposed OFDM system based on BCH channel

coding and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) technique
are used to enhance performance of OFDM system by
reducing the PAPR value.

o BER performance also will be improved over Additive

White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and fading channels
Also, in the future :
we can increase number of inputs of fast Fourier
transform, this increase number of subcarriers and bit
rate in the transmitter.

Also, in the future we can include cyclic prefix

component which used to protect data from distortion
Finally
• results of simulation show the proposed
system performance are much better
comparing with that of the conventional
OFDM system.
THANK YOU