OFDM(A) Competence Development Part I

Per Hjalmar Lehne, Frode Bhagen, Telenor R&I

R&I seminar, 23 January 2008, Fornebu, Norway

Per-hjalmar.lehne@telenor.com
Frode.bohagen@telenor.com
Outline

Part I: What is OFDM?

Part II: Introducing multiple access: OFDMA, SC-FDMA

Part III: Wireless standards based on OFDMA

Part IV: Radio planning of OFDMA

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OFDM Basic Concept

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a

multi-carrier modulation scheme
First break the data into small portions
Then use a number of parallel orthogonal sub-carriers to transmit
the data

Conventional transmission uses a single carrier, which is

modulated with all the data to be sent

Single Carrier Company

Multi Carrier Company

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OFDM Basic Concept

OFDM is a special case of

Frequency Division Multiplexing
(FDM)
For FDM
No special relationship between
the carrier frequencies
Guard bands have to be inserted
to avoid Adjacent Channel
Interference (ACI)
For OFDM
Strict relation between carriers:
fk = kDf where Df = 1/TU
(TU - symbol period)
Carriers are orthogonal to each
other and can be packed tight

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OFDM Transmission model

Channel, h(t)

Modulator Wireless channel

and transmitter
Receiver and demodulator
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 Orthogonality the essential property

Example: Receiver branch k

Ideal channel: No noise and no multipath

1 j2 q k a k , k q
TU N c 1 N c 1 TU 1
aq t

aq e j2 qDft
e j2 kDft
dt e
TU
dt

TU 0 q 0 q 0 TU 0 0, k q
Received signal, r(t)

Tu = 1/Df gives subcarrier orthogonality over one Tu

=> possible to separate subcarriers in receiver

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OFDM Signal properties
Frequency domain

Time domain

Power Spectrum for OFDM symbol

frequency
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OFDM Signal properties

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Multipath channel

Diffracted and Scattered Paths

[ k , k ]

LOS Path [ 0 , 0 ]

[1 , 1 ]

Reflected Path

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 Multipath channel (cyclic prefix)
Multipath introduces inter-symbol-interference (ISI)
TU

Prefix is added to avoid ISI

Example multipath profile
TCP TU
Amplitude
[]

0 1 2 Time The prefix is made cyclic to avoid inter-carrier-interference (ICI)

[] (maintain orthogonality)

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Multipath channel (cyclic prefix)

Tcp should cover the maximum length of the time

dispersion
Increasing Tcp implies increased overhead in power and
bandwidth (Tcp/ TS)
For large transmission distances there is a trade-off
between power loss and time dispersion

TS

CP Useful symbol CP Useful symbol CP Useful symbol

Tcp TU

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Multipath channel (frequency diversity)

The OFDM symbol can be exposed to a frequency selective

channel
The attenuation for each subcarrier can be viewed as flat
Due to the cyclic prefix there is no need for a complex equalizer

Possible transmission techniques

Forward error correction (FEC) over the frequency band
Adaptive coding and modulation per carrier

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Multipath channel (frequency diversity)

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Multipath channel (pilot symbols)

The channel parameters can be estimated based on known

symbols (pilot symbols)
The pilot symbols should have sufficient density to provide
estimates with good quality (tradeoff with efficiency)
Different estimation methods exist
Averaging combined with interpolation
Minimum-mean square error (MMSE)

Pilot carriers /reference signals

Data carriers

Time

Frequency/subcarrier Pilot symbol

Frequency
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The Peak to Average Power Problem

A OFDM signal consists of a number of independently modulated

symbols
The sum of independently modulated subcarriers can have large
amplitude variations
N c 1
x(t ) a
k 0
k e j2 kDf t

Results in a large peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR)

PA

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The Peak to Average Power Problem

Example with 8 carriers and

BPSK modulation
x(t) plotted

It can be shown that the PAPR

becomes equal to Nc

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The Peak to Average Power Problem

High efficiency power amplifiers

are desirable AM/AM characteristic
For the handset, long battery life
For the base station, reduced
operating costs POUT
A large PAPR is negative for the
power amplifier efficiency
Non-linearity results in inter- OBO
modulation
Degrades BER performance IBO
Out-of-band radiation

PA

Average Peak
PIN

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The Peak to Average Power Problem

Different tools to deal with large PAPR

Signal distortion techniques
Clipping and windowing introduces distortion and out-of-band
radiation, tradeoff with respect to reduced backoff
Coding techniques
FEC codes excludes OFDM symbols with a large PAPR
(decreasing the PAPR decreases code space). Tone reservation,
and pre-coding are other examples of coding techniques.
Scrambling techniques
Different scrambling sequences are applied, and the one
resulting in the smallest PAPR is chosen

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OFDM Synchronization

Timing recovery
No problem if offset is within D
max D

CP Useful symbol
Integration period, TU

Frequency synchronization
A carrier synchronization error will introduce phase
rotation, amplitude reduction and ICI
Frequency offsets of up to 2 % of Df is negligible
Even offsets of 5 10 % can be tolerated in many
situations

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Choosing the OFDM parameters

Symbol time (TU) and subcarrier Increase CP

overhead
spacing (Df) are inverse
TU = 1/Df Increasing
subcarrier spacing
Consequences of increasing the
subcarrier spacing
Increase cyclic prefix overhead
TU

Consequences of decreasing the Decreasing

subcarrier spacing subcarrier spacing

Increase sensitivity to frequency

inaccuracy
Increasing number of subcarriers
increases Tx and Rx complexity
Increase sensitivity to
frequency accuracy

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Summary

Advantages
Splitting the channel into narrowband channels enables significant
simplification of equalizer design
Effective implementation possible by applying FFT
Flexible bandwidths enabled through scalable number of sub-
channels
Possible to exploit both time and frequency domain variations (time
domain adaptation/coding + freq. domain adaptation/coding)
Challenges
Large peak to average power ratio

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 Summary
Pilot carriers /reference signals
Data carriers

Frequency/subcarrier

PA
CP Channel, h(t)

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