Doppler Diversity for OFDM Wireless Mobile Communications

Part 11: Time-Frequency Processing

Byung-Chul Kim System Architecture Design Lab TN Business, Sainsung Electronics Co. Ltd. P.O.Box 105, Suwon, Gyeonggi-do 442-742, Korea Email: bchk@samsung.com Abstract-A novel timefrequency processing scheme is developed to exploit Doppler diversity of time varying multipath channel for OFDM mobile communication systems. Extensive simulations show that the proposed time-frequency MMSE processing scheme alters the statistics of the fading to improve BER significantly.
I. INTRODUCTION Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a multicarrier technique where the subcarriers are orthogonal to one another in a stationary environment. It is spectral efficient because the spectra of subcamers can partially overlap without creating intercamer interference (ICI). It is also effective for mitigating frequency selective fading because the bandwidth of each subcarrier can be made so narrow that each subcarrier experiences only flat fading. Furthermore, it is easy to implement because the signal processing architectures need only IFFT, FFT and simple frequency-domain equalization. However, when the channel response varies rapidly in time, these advantages disappear because orthogonality between subcarriers is destroyed and IC1 arises. Recently, Doppler diversity is proposed to combat time variation for single carrier systems [l-3]. A general idea of achieving Doppler diversity is to generate diversity branches from the received signal by inducing artificial frequency shifts of the received signal. These artificial frequency shifts modify the relative phase changing rates for each multipath arrival in different branches because each arrival has its own Doppler frequency shift. Therefore, multipath arrivals are combined with different phases in different diversity branches, and the fading of desired signals at these branches could become incoherent. The faster the original fading rate is, the less correlated the signals at these branches become. These branches can then be combined to provide Doppler diversity gain for the desired signal. Although the technique has been proven effective in single carrier systems, it cannot be directly applied to OFDM systems because IC1 (which does not exist in single carrier system) strength increases and the desired signal strength decreases with the artificial frequency sbifls in diversity branches of OFDM systems.

I-Tai Lu Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Polytechnic University 105 Maxess Road, Melville, NY 11747, USA Email: itailu@rama.poly.edu systems. In our approach, the received OFDM signal is first frequency shifted to generate various diversity branches. A MMSE FIR filter is then employed to suppress intercarrier interference and Doppler effects for each branch. Subsequently, another MMSE combiner combines the outputs of FIR filters. The combiner output is then demodulated using FFT to recover the information carried by all subcarriers Extensive numerical simulations have been carried out in order to find the optimum number of diversity branches and the optimum artificial frequency shifls. MVDR (minimum variance distortionless response) method is employed to examine the effectiveness of each MMSE FIR filter in suppressing ICI. Although the MMSE FIR shows a good performance in suppressing IC1 for any given diversity branch, the desired signal strength decreases as the corresponding artificial frequency shift or the maximum Doppler spread increases. Furthermore, the IC1 increases as the corresponding artificial frequency shift or the maximum Doppler spread increases. Fortunately, the correlation between the IC1 component in a Doppler branch and the IC1 component in the originally received signal is almost zero for various fading rates when the artificial frequency shift is around 0.75/T where T is the symbol duration [4]. Extensive simulations show that the proposed time-frequency MMSE processing scheme with three Doppler branches of which frequency'shifls are 0.75/T, 0 and -0.75lT respectively, alters statistics of the fading to improve BER significantly. In the companion paper [4], Doppler diversity is achieved alternatively by a frequency-domain processing scheme. Similar conclusions are obtained.
11.

FORMULATION

A . Channel and Signal Models The time-varying channel impulse response h(t,r) is represented as

where a p ,zy , and

are the complex amplitude, time

In this paper, a novel time-frequency MMSE processing scheme is developed to achieve Doppler diversity in OFDM

delay, and Doppler shift of the plh multipath arrival. Here, N,,

0.7803-7757-S/03/$17 00 02003 IEEE

2682

is the number of paths, and denotes the Dirac delta function. Consider an OFDM signal containing N sub-carriers

a(.)

where d , is the i" parallel information bit to be transmitted through the time-valying channel, A f is the sampling time interval, and A f is the frequency separation between two adjacent subcamers. For convenience, the discrete integer variable k alone will be used to represent the continuous quantity kAl in the arguments of various variables in the following text. However, when it is necessary. kAt will be explicitly expressed for clarification. From the convolution of input and impulse response of the channel, the received signal is represented as

Figure I . Propored time-frequency Doppler Diversity Receiver.

and the cross correlation vector between the transmined signal and the received signal for the 4Ih shifted Doppler branch is represented as where n ( k ) denotes the additive white Gaussian noise with variance 0.2.

c,V)
rIl*)=E[y.(*i.'(XI,=[c~~k~,
C:+,(P)=E{ y , ( k - l )

(9)
O<I<L-I

B. MMSE Equalizationfor Time Vaiying Channel As shown in Fig.1, the proposed novel time-frequency processing scheme is facilitated using Q parallel minimum mean squared error (MMSE) linear equalizers to exploit the multipath and Doppler diversities simultaneously. For the q* linear equalizer, the received signal x ( k ) is first shifted by a predetermined frequency vu and then equalized by a conventional linear equalizer. The frequency-shifted received signal is denoted by y , ( k ) x(k)e"'@ . Let y , ( k ) be the
signal vector, w , ( k ) be the weight vector and r J k ) be the output at the Uh sample of the q* equalizer. From Fig. 1, the output
z q ( k )= W q ( k l HY,@)
(4)

s'(k)

1,

In practical parameter regimes, channel variations over a symbol period are small and can be neglected. Therefore, in simulation, the equalizer weights are kept constants during a symbol period. Auto correlation and cross correlation coefficients for the received signal are then obtained using sample average during a pilot-symbol period. In this manner, delay offsets, phase shifts and amplitude fades of signal constituents with Doppler siAs around vu is compensated and equalized.

where

C. MMSE Diversity Combination In the second phase, the Q Doppler branches are combined to generate the Doppler Diversity result z^(k),which can be represented as

Y , ( k ) = Iv,W

'.' Y,(k

-L

+ 111'

(5)

i(k) = a"z(k)

(10)

w T ( k ) = [ w , ( k ) ...

wq ( k - L + ~ ) f

(6)

Here, L is the number of taps of each equalizer, the superscript The MMSE solution at the Uh sample of the qIh equalizer is achieved by using the weight vector:

where the Qxl input vector z(k), of which elements are the outputs of equalizers, is
z ( k ) = [z, ( k ) . . z p ( k ) Y ,

H denotes Hermition and the superscript T denotes transpose.

(11)

w q ( k )= [ R a ( k ) r r z ( k ) .

(7)

and a(k) is a Qxl branch weight vector. The optimum MMSE branch weight vector can be derived using the same technique used for obtaining the equalizer weight vector as
a =R ; : r,, (12) where the QxQ autocorrelation matrix and Qxl cross correlation vector for Doppler diversity are represented as

The auto correlation matrix of the received signal for the qlhshifted Doppler branch is represented as

r'(k)
R:,.(k) = E [ y , ( k ) y , H ( k ) ] =
[I.';

'..

r"(k)

'.( r:,, ( k ) .. ' r:.L ( k )

1,

(8)
and

R , = Eb(k)z"W)

(13)

rp,,,,,,(k)=E[y,(k-l)y;(k-m)],

OS f , m < L - l

2683

TABLE 1.

PARAMETERS PORTHES~MULATION

Maximum delay q r r n d Numkrofsamplcr pmrymhol

Numher of sub-oarrim Xmber of lops

Ia . , ,
~

1 8 ~amples

: iv !L
~

bbarimum Doppler sprcad Tips 01DoppIer spotr.4 density Signal to n o i s ratio

Fd

j; 6 + :
!

1 512 312
I:2J

sm

IlniCwm 1 30 dR

rzx =E{dk)s*(k)}

I2!
02

i ,
L'

(14)

respectively. By a proper selection of a set of frequency shifts { v q } and equalizers, frequency shifts can be compensated and multipath can be equalized simultaneously for signal constituents of the entire Doppler spectrum. These compensated and equalized signals can then be combined to provide diversity gain.
111. SIMULATION RESULTS The transmitted OFDM signal contains 5 12 sub-carriers. No cyclic prefix is placed in each symbol and there are 512 samples per symbol period T. For the time varying channel, there are 128 multipaths and the maximum delay spread is 8 time samples. The Doppler spectrum is flat and the maximum Doppler spread FD= 0.5 or I , The number of taps for equalizer is chosen to be 16 or 32. In order to examine the effect of inter-carrier interference due to Doppler effect, SNR is set to be 30 dB.
As shown in ow previous study [4], intercamer interference is not suppressed in a frequency shifted Doppler branch. In fact, SIR decreases as the shifted frequency increases in a Doppler branch (see Fig. 2 & 3 in [4]). It is then very critical to choose the shifted frequencies such that the intercamer interferences in various Doppler branches will be destructively combined (see Fig. 5 in [4]). In this paper, time processing (equalization) is included in addition to the frequency processing proposed in [4]. In order to check the effectiveness of the equalizer, characteristics of equalizer input x ( k ) and equalizer output z ( k ) are compared. The MVDR method [SI is used to estimate the time-frequency and spectrum of cross-correlations E(x(k -/)s+(k))

Ol

t
l

t
-0 I

ols

05

Figure 3 . Bit error rate (BER) is computed for each individual equalizer with various Doppler frequency shifls v / s for F,;iT=O.S.BEK for S-channel (v, = f l .0 t0.5 and 0)combination is 0.0028.

E ( z ( k - / ) s ' ( k ) ) for various time delays / (i.e., / A I ) where s ( k ) is the originally transmitted OFDM signal. The left plot in Fig. 2 shows the time-frequency spectrum of E ( x ( k - / ) s ' ( k ) ) , which demonstrates Doppler shifts, time delays and magnitudes of I28 multipath arrivals of the channel. Intersymhol interferences will be induced by the delay spread and intercamer interferences will be induced by the Doppler shifts. The right plot in Fig. 2 shows the time-frequency spectrum of E ( s ( k - / ) s ' ( k ) ) . It is remarkable that the equalizer output contains only one dominant contribution, i.e., the MMSE equalizer suppresses most inter-symbol and intercamer interferences.
er

'\>--~O i l -1.5

4s

Figure 2. Cross comelation coetlicientr for equalizer input (left) and output h )plane when FoT = 0.3 and the (right) on the time-Doppler ftequeney ( maximm delay (0spread is 12 samples. The lefl plot shows distribution of Doppler frequeneis and delays of multipath. The interferences caused by these Doppler spread and delay spread are suppressed by the equalizer (see the equalizer output in the right plot).

Figure 4. BEK is computed for each individual equalizer with various frequency shifts v i s for FoT=l .O.BEK for 7-channel (vp = *I.S f l .O 9 . 5 and 0) combination is 0.0289.

2684

the IC1 distribution is not changed much by the diversity combining.

Mi

IV. CONCLUSION Jn the OFDM systems, Doppler spreads produce ICI, which is the dominant perfomiance degradation factor. The higher the Doppler effect is, the worse the BER performance becomes. Fortunately, the higher the Doppler effect is, the larger the diversity gain grows to be. The proposed timefrequency equalizer is effective in suppressing the inter symbol interference caused by delay spread and the inter carrier interference caused by Doppler spread of time varying multipath channel. Although the technique is examined using only an OFDM signal in this report, it can be applied to any broadband communication scheme. It can also be extended to Smart antenna stmctures.
REFERCNCES (I] *bar M. Seed and Behnaam Aaxhang, Joint Multipati-Doppler Diversity in Mobile Wireless communications, IEEE Trows. Cummunicorions,vol. 41, No.l,pp.l23-131,January 1999. [2] Timothy A. Thomas and Frednck W. Vwk, Multi-user frequencydomain channel identification. interference suppression, and equalization for time-valying broadband wireless communications, Proc. Sensor Array and Mullichannel Sign01 Processing Workhop. 2000, pp. 444 448, March 2000. 131 Boudreau, R, Chouinard,JLY. and Yongacaglu, A., Exploiting Dopplerdiversity in flat, fast fading channels, Camdim Conference on Eleclricol and Compuler engineering 2000, vol. I,pp. 270-274, March 2000. (41 Byung-Chul Kim and I-Tai Lu, Doppler Diversity for 0 R ) M W i r e l e s s Mobile Communiealions: Parl I: Frequency-Domain Approach, Proc. IEEE VTC 2003 Spring, Korea, Ape1 2003, in press. (51 Steven M. Kay, Modem SpeclmI Eslimolion:Tiheo~and Applimim, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1988.

Figure 5. Histograms for the desired signal and the noise plus IC1 for cases with Doppler diversity (Q=3) and without Doppler diversity (Q=I).

Bit error rate ( E R ) is computed for each individual equalizer with various Doppler frequency shifts vus for FoT = 0.5 and 1.0. The results, shown in Fig. 3 & 4, respectively, are consistent with that shown in Fig. 2. We conclude that an MMSE equalizer alone is able to suppress some inter-symbol and inter-camer interference. However, the larger the artificial frequency shift or the maximum Doppler frequency is, the larger the BER is. It is remarkable that the BER of diversity-combined results of several equalizer outputs is one order less than the BER of each individual equalizer output. In the frequency domain Doppler diversity system, it was shown in Fig. 4 in [4] that diversity gain is due to differences in the channel responses among different Doppler branches. Such effects are also found in the time domain Doppler diversity system (Le., time-frequency processing). The histograms (shown in Fig. 5) of a desired subcarrier and intercamer interference (ICJ) are derived from 5000 trials. At FuT = 0.25, the histograms of Q = I (without diversity) and Q = 3 (with diversity) are very similar to each other, and the effect of Doppler diversity is very small (BERs are 0.0323 for Q = I , and 0.0176 for Q = 3). However, at FuT = 0.75, the effect of Doppler diversity is profound (BERs are 0.1400 for Q = 1, and 0.0288 for Q = 3). From Fig. 5b, the desired signal (subcarrier) distribution is significantly changed by the diversity combining of the three equalizer-branches. However,

2685