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Wireless Communications: Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

OFDM is a digital multi-carrier modulation technique that divides the available spectrum into multiple orthogonal sub-carriers. It has advantages like high spectral efficiency, resilience to radio frequency interference and multipath fading. OFDM works by splitting a high-rate data stream into multiple lower-rate streams that are transmitted simultaneously over subcarriers. It is used in various wireless communication standards like Wi-Fi, DSL, and LTE due to its ability to cope with severe channel conditions and high multipath environments. However, OFDM also faces challenges related to synchronization, peak-to-average power ratio, and sensitivity to frequency offsets.

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84 views16 pages

Wireless Communications: Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

OFDM is a digital multi-carrier modulation technique that divides the available spectrum into multiple orthogonal sub-carriers. It has advantages like high spectral efficiency, resilience to radio frequency interference and multipath fading. OFDM works by splitting a high-rate data stream into multiple lower-rate streams that are transmitted simultaneously over subcarriers. It is used in various wireless communication standards like Wi-Fi, DSL, and LTE due to its ability to cope with severe channel conditions and high multipath environments. However, OFDM also faces challenges related to synchronization, peak-to-average power ratio, and sensitivity to frequency offsets.

Uploaded by

Thota Deep
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Wireless Communications

Orthogonal frequency-division
multiplexing (OFDM)
OFDM
History
1957: Kineplex multi-carrier modem
1966: Chang, Bell Labs: OFDM paper & patent
1971:Weinstein & Ebert propose use of FFT and guard
interval
1985: Cimini describes use of OFDM for mobile
communications
1987 Alard & Lasalle: OFDM for digital
broadcasting 1995: ETSI DAB standard: first
OFDM-based standard 1997: DVB-T standard
1998: Magic WAND project demonstrates OFDM modems for
wireless LAN
1999: IEEE 802.11a and HIPERLAND/2 standards for
wireless LAN 2000:V-OFDM for fixed wireless access
2001: OFDM considered for new IEEE 802.11 and 802.16
standards
OFDM
Basic idea
Using a large number of parallel narrow-band sub-
carrier instead of a single wide-band carrier to
transport information
Advantages
Very easy and efficient in dealing with multi-path
Robust against narrow-band interference

Disadvantages
Sensitive to frequency offset and phase noise
Peak-to-average problem reduces the power
efficiency of RF amplifier at the transmitter

Adopted by various standards


DSL, 802.11a, DAB, DVB, etc.
OFDM
Definition
The technique of OFDM is based on the well-
technique
known of FDM
FDM technique: FDM
Different streams of
information
frequency
are mappedchannels
onto separate
Guard bands are inserted to reduce interference between frequency
parallel
adjacent
channels
OFDM technique
Multiple carriers carry
the information stream OFDM
Carrier spectrum are
are overlapped
and orthogonal to each
other
A guard time is added frequency
to each symbol
to combat the channel
delay spread
Importance of
OFDM

 All cargo on one truck vs. splitting the shipment into more
than one.
Concept of
OFDM
A type of multi-carrier modulation
Single high-rate bit stream is converted to low-rate N
parallel bit stream
Each parallel bit stream is modulated on one of N sub-
carriers
Each sub-carrier can be modulated by QPSK or QAM
Add a guard time to each OFDM symbol to avoid inter-
symbol interference of fading channel
To achieve high bandwidth efficiency, the sub-carriers are
closely spaced and overlapped
Sub-carriers are orthogonal over the symbol time
Use coding to correct errors for sub-carriers in deep
fading environment
Advantages of
Robust inOFDM
multi-path propagation
environment
More tolerant of delay spread
Due to the use of many sub-carriers, the symbol
duration is increased, relative to delay spread
Inter-symbol interference is avoided through the
use of guard interval
Simplified or eliminate equalization needs, as
compared to single carrier modulation
More resistant to fading
Low symbol rate per carrier provides the robustness
against frequency selective fading or narrowband
interference
FEC is used to correct for sub-carriers that suffer
OFDM Good for Broadband
Systems
Most broadband systems are subjects to
multipath transmission
Conventional solution to multipath is an
equalizer in the receiver
Equalizers are too complicated at
high data rates
With OFDM there is a simple way of
dealing with multipath
Relatively simple DSP algorithms
Modulation
Single carrier modulation
 Multi carrier modulationSystem

N subchannels N
complex samples
Quadrature
amplitude add D/A +
S/P modulation N-IFFT cyclic P/S transmit
(QAM) filter
encoder prefix

TRANSMITTER
multipath channel
RECEIVER
N subchannels N complex samples

channel Receive
remove filter
QAM
P/S N-FFT S/P cyclic +
decoder estima- prefix A/D
tion &
equalizer
Multicarri
Rate R
Mapping
er Filter
f0
Rate R
Mapping Filter
f1
Rate NR
Rate R
Mapping Filter
fN-1
Bandlimite
d signals
f0 f1
fN-1
f2
 The transmission bandwidth is divided into sub-bands which
are transmitted in parallel
 Ideally, each sub-band is narrow enough so that the fading
it experiences is flat (no ISI)
 Disadvantages
-- Requires filter bank at receiver
-- Spectrally inefficiency
OFDM Source of
Impairment
Power Amplifier
Non-Linear

FEC QAM Pilot Insert


IQ
Coding Mapping Insertion Guard DAC
Modulator
IFFT Interval HP
Fixed-Point A
(TX)
Computation Multi-path
Error Frequency
Phase noise Fading
Corrected
Channel
Signal ADC
FEC FFT Remove noise AGC Response Time
QAM Channel (RX)
Decoding De- Correction Guard
Interval ADC
Mapping
Symbol timing AGC LNA
Timing Amp
Frequency
Synchronizatio Phase noise
n Frequency offset
Problems of OFDM
Modulation
ICI (Inter-channel interference): interference
between symbol in adjacent frequencies
ISI (inter-symbol interference):
interference of successive OFDM frames
Highly vulnerable to synchronization
errors and frequency offsets
Highly vulnerable to the non-linearity (in the RF
analog front end)
Challenges for
OFDM
Synchronization challenges
Transmitter frequency  Receiver frequency
 same frequency, different phase
 slightly different frequencies
 Asynchronous: totally different frequencies
Transmitter sampling time  Receiver sampling
time
Symbol timing is unknown to receiver
Peak-to Average Power Ratio (PAPR)
Dynamic range at output of IFFT is much larger than
at input
Channel estimation for time varying
environment
Impact of Symbol
Duration
The symbol duration of OFDM is much larger
than that of single carrier system under the
similar overall transmission bandwidth
A larger symbol duration will enhance the
effective bit rate and power utilization if the
delay spread is about fixed
The larger OFDM duration when compared with
the channel coherence time can reduce the ability
to combat the fast temporal fading
The channel coherence time is inversely
proportional to the maximum Doppler shift
Impact of Sub-Carrier
Spacing
Because of the time-frequency duality, some of the
time- domain arguments can be translated to the
frequency domain
The large number of OFDM sub-carriers makes
the bandwidth of the individual sub-carriers small
relative to the overall signal bandwidth and the
channel coherence bandwidth
The fading on each sub-carrier is frequency flat
and can be better modeled as a constant complex
channel gain.
The narrower sub-carrier spacing will be easier to
cause inter-carrier interference

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