10/03/2011

Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing(OFDM) Block Diagram of OFDM
f Transmitter

Serial to IFFT Add Parallel to

— OFDM: A form of Multicarrier Modulation Parallel CP Serial
— Different data is transmitted over different subcarriers. Receiver Channel
— The main concept in OFDM is orthogonality of the Parallel to FFT Remove Serial to
subcarriers Serial CP Parallel
OFDM Transmitter and Receiver
— The orthogonality allows simultaneous transmission
on a lot of subcarriers in a tight frequency space
without interference.

The Multipath Channel Cyclic Prefix

— The transmitted signal reflects off of several objects. — A copy of the signal tail (length TG) is inserted at the
— Multiple delayed versions arrive at receiver beginning of each OFDM symbol.
— This causes inter-symbol interference. — Absorbs multipath components.

— Cyclic prefix is added to solve this problem.

Advantages of OFDM Disadvantages

— Spectral efficiency, also called bandwidth efficiency. — The Peak to Average Power Ratio is the main
— More data can be transmitted faster in a given disadvantage.
bandwidth in the presence of noise. — The large amplitude variation increases in-band noise
— The cyclic extension, is the simpler way to eliminate and increases the BER when the signal has to go
ISI than the time-domain pulse-shaping mechanism through amplifier nonlinearities.
used in single carrier systems.
— Equalisation is much easier than with single carrier
systems which use adaptive filtering. OFDM
equalisation is done in the frequency-domain after the
FFT.

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 10/03/2011

Orthogonal Frequency Division OFDMA

Multiple Access (OFDMA)
— (OFDMA) is a multi-user multi-carrier modulation
technique.
— OFDMA distributes sub-carriers among several users
so that all of them can simultaneously share one
OFDM channel.
— OFDMA employs multiple closely spaced sub-carriers,
but the sub-carriers are divided into groups of sub-
carriers.
— Each group is named a sub-channel. The sub-carriers
that form a sub-channel need not be adjacent.
— Different users perceive different channel qualities, a
deep faded channel for one user may still be favorable
to others

OFDMA Transmitter and Receiver

— A user close to the base station would normally be assigned
Xn
a larger number of channels with a high modulation
Parallel
Subcarrier Serial to M-Point Add CP
to Serial
scheme such as 64 QAM (quadrature amplitude
Mapping Parallel IFFT
modulation) to deliver the most data throughput to that
user. As the user moves farther away, the number of sub
Channel channels is re-assigned dynamically to fewer and fewer sub
channels. However, the power allotted to each channel is
Detect
Subcarrier Parallel M-Point Remov Serial to raised. The modulation scheme could gradually shift from
De-Mapping to Serial FFT e CP Parallel 16 QAM to Quaternary Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) (four
channels) and even binary phase shift keying (BPSK) (two
channels) at longer ranges. The data throughput drops as
the channel capacity and modulation change, but the link
maintains its strength.

OFDMA Downside Single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA)

— A problem with OFDMA is its high sensitivity to — SC-FDMA is a hybrid modulation scheme that
frequency offset . combines the low peak-to-average ratio (PAR) of
— In OFDM since all the frequencies of the subcarriers single-carrier and flexible subcarrier frequency
were generated by one transmitter, maintaining allocation offered by OFDM.
orthogonality of the subcarriers is relatively easy. — SC-FDMA can be interpreted as a linearly
— In OFDMA, since many users transmit precoded OFDMA scheme, in the sense that it has
simultaneously, each with their own estimates of the an additional DFT processing preceding the
subcarrier frequencies, a frequency offset is inevitable conventional OFDMA processing
and multiple access interference occurs as users’ power
leaks into subcarriers bands.

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 10/03/2011

SC-FDMA
— They transmit the subcarriers symbols sequentially,
rather than in parallel. Relative to OFDMA, this
arrangement reduces considerably the envelope
fluctuations in the transmitted waveform.
— Therefore, SC-FDMA signals have inherently lower
PAPR than OFDMA signals.
SC-FDMA
— There are two approaches to apportioning subcarriers
among users.
— Localized SC-FDMA (LFDMA): each user uses a set of
adjacent subcarriers to transmit its symbols.
— Distributed SC-FDMA: in which the subcarriers used
by a user are spread over the entire signal band.

Localized and Distributed

Subcarriers SC-FDMA
N-Point Subcarri Serial M-Point Add CP Parallel
DFT er to IFFT to Serial
User 1 Mapping Parallel

Channel
User 2

N-Point Subcarrier Parallel M-Point Remov Serial to

User 3
IDFT De- to Serial FFT e CP Parallel
Mapping

User 4 Distributed Sub-carriers Localized Sub-carrier Allocation

OFDM and OFDMA

— SC-FDMA signals PAPRs achieve lower values on
average, mainly due to the fact that they map their
input bits to time symbols, as opposed to OFDM and
OFDMA which map them directly to frequency
symbols.

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 10/03/2011

OFDMA and SC-FDMA

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