Non Binary SC-FDMA for 3GPP LTE Uplink

Mohammad Rakibul Islam1, Mohammad Irfan, Nadim Ullah, Shafi Ullah, Shaikh Mohammad Fahim, Ishtiza Ibne Azad
Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Islamic University of Technology Board Bazar, Gazipur-1704, Dhaka, Bangladesh E-mail: rakibultowhid@yahoo.com 1 Corresponding author Abstract - Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) is a multiple access scheme that uses DFT spreading prior to OFDM modulation to map the signal from each user to a subset of the available subcarriers. That has similar performance and almost the same overall structure as those of an OFDMA system. Its advantage over OFDMA is that the SC-FDMA signal has lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). SC-FDMA has drawn great attention as an attractive alternative to OFDMA, especially in the uplink communications where lower PAPR greatly benefits the mobile terminal in terms of transmitted power efficiency. In this paper, we have given the proposal of Non Binary SC-FDMA, replacing binary number by octal number system. The most prominent result that we have obtained using non-binary SC-FDMA, compared to binary case is further reduction of BER and peak power of SC-FDMA signals which have been shown by mathematical analysis, and are simulated for different channels using Interleaved FDMA

(IFDMA), and localized FDMA (LFDMA). Keywords SC-FDMA, LFDMA, DFDMA, IFDMA, LTE

I. INTRODUCTION Demands for media rich wireless data services have brought much attention to high-speed broadband mobile wireless techniques in recent years. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), which is a multicarrier communication technique, has become widely accepted primarily because of its robustness against frequency selective fading channels which are common in broadband mobile wireless communication Broadband wireless communication systems must achieve high data rates in a spectrally efficiency manner. For this reason, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) [1, 2] has been widely employed in systems such as the IEEE 802.11a/g standards. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is multiple access schemes for OFDM that works by assigning each user a unique set of subcarriers. OFDMA is currently employed in the IEEE802.16 standard. One major drawback of OFDM and OFDMA is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) that results from a multicarrier signal [2]. High-PAPR transmit signals require significant back off in the power amplifier and this reduces their power efficiency and mean power output. This can be problematic, particularly on the uplink where battery powered terminals struggle to match the data rate and range of the downlink. Since in OFDMA the bandwidth of a subcarrier is designed to be smaller than the coherence Bandwidth each

sub-channel is seen as flat fading channel, which simplifies the channel equalization process In the time domain, by splitting a high-rate data streams into a number of lower rate data streams that are transmitted in parallel, OFDM resolves the problem of ISI in wide band communications [3]. But OFDM has its disadvantages High peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), high sensitivity to frequency offset, and a need for an adaptive or coded scheme to overcome spectral nulls in the channel [3],[4]. In this paper, we give an in-depth overview of a single carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) system, which is a newly developed multiple access scheme adopted in the uplink of 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE), and show some research results on its PAPR characteristics and resource scheduling. At the same time we have given a proposal for non-binary SC-FDMA and have shown its effect on bit error rate. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II comprises of an over view of SC-FDMA. Section III describes subcarrier mapping in SC-FDMA. Section IV gives an overview of non-binary SC-FDMA and subcarriers mapping using non-binary case include numerical analysis for the PAPR using IFDMA and LFDMA mapping schemes. Section V concludes with BER analysis along with its simulated results. II. OVERVIEW OF SC-FDMA By comparing both OFDMA and SC-FDMA as shown in figure.1; both have quite similar characteristics. The SCFDMA uses extra DFT block after baseband Modulation as shown by yellow rectangle. So, the SC-FDMA can be considered as a modified version of OFDMA and can be called as DFT spread OFDMA where time domain data symbols are transformed to frequency domain by DFT before going through OFDMA modulation [5]. The orthogonality of the users stems from the fact that each user occupies different subcarriers in the frequency domain, similar to the case of OFDMA. Because the overall transmit signal is a single carrier signal PAPR is inherently low compared to the case of OFDMA, which produces a multicarrier signal [6]. The transmitter of an SC-FDMA system first groups the modulation symbols into blocks each containing N symbols. Next, it performs an N-point DFT to produce a frequency domain representation of the input symbols. It then maps each of the N-DFT outputs to one of the (M > N) orthogonal subcarriers that can be transmitted. If N = M/Q and all terminals transmit N symbols per block, the system can handle Q simultaneous transmissions without co-channel interference.

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Q is the bandwidth expansion factor of the symbol sequence. CP is a copy of the last part of the block, which is added at the start of each block. The mathematical notation used in this paper follows that reported in [6]. M represents the total number of available subcarriers, where M =Q.N, Q denotes the spreading factor and N represents the number of sub carriers

assigned to each user. We further assume that each user occupies the same number of subcarriers, so in this case Q also represents the number of users. Each user p, p = 0,..., Q 1, generates a block of N complex-valued symbols, xn ,n =0,..., N-1. By applying an N-point DFT to, the xn frequency domain

Fig.1 Block diagram of SC-FDMA

Symbols, xn can be described as

The frequency domain symbols are then mapped onto a set of user-dependent subcarriers

symbol interference. And at the same time maximum number of user can communicate. There are two methods to choose the subcarriers for transmission distributed subcarrier mapping and localized subcarrier mapping. In the distributed subcarrier mapping mode, DFT outputs in the distributed subcarrier mapping of the input data are allocated over the entire bandwidth with zeros occupying the unused subcarriers, whereas consecutive subcarriers are occupied by the DFT outputs, of the input data in the localized subcarrier mapping mode. The case of M = QN for the distributed mode with equidistance between occupied subcarriers is called Interleaved FDMA (IFDMA) [6], [7]. Figure 2 shows the time and frequency symbols for different subcarrier mapping schemes. The signal for each subcarrier mapping for M = 12, N = 4, Q IFDMA = 3, and Q DFDMA = 2 without pulse shaping. IV. PROPOSED NON-BINARY SC-FDMA Non Binary SC-FDMA is the proposed scheme, where non-Binary octal number system is used instead of conventional binary system. The Fig. 3 shows the block diagram of non -binary SC-FDMA transmitter and receiver. In the first block, we encoded our baseband signal. Before going to baseband modulation, we have to convert our baseband signal into its non binary equivalent numbers using binary to non binary converter; in our case we have used non binary octal digits. As each octal digit corresponds to three binary

Fig. 2 Time and frequency domain symbols of different subcarrier mapping

III.SUBCARRIER MAPPING Once we get the symbols in frequency domain the next step is to allocate subcarrier to each symbol, such that each user is provided with separate bandwidth avoiding inter-

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digits as shown in Fig. 4, the equivalent octal digit is then assigned to each group. The transmitter of non binary SCFDMA system first groups the modulation symbols into blocks each containing N symbols. Next, it performs an Npoint DFT to produce a frequency domain representation of the input symbols. It then maps each of the N-DFT outputs to one of the (M > N) orthogonal subcarriers that can be transmitted. If N = M/Q and all terminals transmit N symbols per block, the system can handle Q simultaneous transmissions without co-channel interference. As in SCFDMA an M-point IDFT transforms the subcarrier amplitudes to a complex time domain signal is then modulated the remaining portion is almost same to the binary case. The receiver transforms the received signal into the frequency domain via DFT, De-maps the subcarriers, and then performs frequency domain equalization. At the receiver side after taking the N-point IDFT, the non binary signal is demodulated, and by the use of non binary to binary converter it is converted back to is binary form. The decoder then decodes the signal in binary. A. Subcarrier Mapping in Non-Binary SC-FDMA

Fig.4 Binary to Non Binary Conversion

The Fig. 5 is almost similar to Fig. 2. The input binary is first converted to its equivalent non-binary and is then grouped into block of N size. Here our block size becomes N = 4 which is equivalent to N = 12 in binary case. The results show that, using non binary (octal) SCFDMA, our block size (N) is reduced by three times. In the similar manner the bandwidth expansion factor Q, which determines the number of users in a given instant can be increased and hence increase the user availability as Q = M/N. Therefore, more users can communicate at the same time without any inter symbol interference. The subcarrier mapping follows the same techniques used for binary SC-FDMA. Only change is the reduction of block size N. The different schemes for subcarrier mapping are shown in Fig. 5 which is similar to that of a binary case.

Fig.5.Time Symbols of Different Subcarrier Mapping

B.

PAPR of Non-Binary SC-FDMA signals

Currently, a lot researches have been done in reducing the PAPR, especially in uplink side of LTE, the most prominent results been shown by Binary SC-FDMA. But, still there is a need for research in the area of coding theory and channel modeling to design codes for channels, that are power limited and or bandwidth limited. One of the major steps in allocating maximum users to the available bandwidth is done by introducing Non Binary SCFDMA C. Numerical Analysis

In this section, we analyze the PAPR of the SC-FDMA signal for each subcarrier-mapping scheme. For distributed subcarrier mapping mode, we will consider the case of IFDMA. In the subsequent derivations, we assume that M = Q*N, Also Q = M/N, Where, N shows number of symbols per block allocated per user. M is the total number of subcarriers and Q shows the bandwidth expansion factor which is also known as the number of users. In our simulation we take M = 384 And N = 12. Hence, in binary case the number of users are Q = 32, While in nonbinary (octal) case the N block length reduces by three times so N = 4, and Q = 96 for non-binary (octal) case.
Fig.3. Block Diagram of Non binary SC-FDMA

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Let {xn be the time domain data symbols to be modulated. Then, The Xk frequency domain symbols after DFT will be {xk: k = 0,1,2,..N/3 -1} the frequency domain symbols after subcarrier mapping will be { Xl : l = 0,1,2.M - 1} and {Xm : m = 0,1,2,.M 1} are time symbols after IDFT. The complex pass band transmit signal of SC-FDMA x(t) for a block of data is represented by

Let

m = Q*n+q Where,

and

where wc is carrier frequency and r(t) is the baseband pulse. 1) Time domain symbols of IFDMA: If q =0; For IFDMA, the frequency samples after subcarrier mapping {Xl} can be described as follows

The time symbol { IDFT of and

} can be obtained by taking the .q+n, where , An example of LFDMA has shown in Fig. 7. D. BER Simulation and results for Non-Binary SC-FDMA , then

Let m =

In this portion we present the effects on average bit error rate of different channels by using our proposed non binary SC-FDMA. For our analysis we have taken different channels and have simulated their bit error rate performance according to the respective SNR values. We have also shown our results for different subcarrier mapping schemes emphasising on IFDMA and LFDMA. For simplicity we have analysed each channel as separate entity and have then simulated accordingly. 1) BER analysis for Ideal Channel: Probability of a bit error for particular values of SNR for ideal channel is shown in Fig. 6. In our research we have shown binary and non-binary (octal) for both interleaved and localized subcarrier mapping schemes. The simulation result of binary case is only shown for localized subcarrier mapping. For ideal channel, localized and interleaved subcarrier mapping has the same BER. Form Fig. 6, it is clear that for SNR values below 7 dB, the probability of bit error is less in the case of non binary SC-FDMA.

An example of IFDMA has shown in fig.7. 2) Time domain symbols of LFDMA: For LFDMA, the frequency samples after subcarrier mapping {Xl} can be described as follows

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3) BER Analysis for VehA channels: Fig 8 shows a similar comparison in VehA channel. For this type of channel both the interleaved and localized subcarrier mapping schemes shows better results in non-binary SCFDMA for any SNR value.
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Fig.6, BER comparison between binary and Non binary for localized and interleaved subcarrier mapping using Ideal channel for, M = 384.,N = 12, using BPSK modulation for binary case and 8-QAM for Non Binary case

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2) BER Analysis for PedA Channels: A PedA channel is a tap-delay line multi-path channel according to the 3GPP specification. For this type of channel, we have shown BER versus SNR curve in Fig. 7. The nonbinary SC-FDMA shows better BER results for localized subcarrier mapping for lower values of SNR. In non-binary case, probability of bit error is less than the probability of bit error in binary case of SC-FDMA for particular lower value of SNR.
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Fig. 8 BER comparison between binary and Non binary for localized and interleaved subcarrier mapping using VehA channel For M = 384, N = 12, using BPSK modulation for binary case and 8-QAM for Non Binary case

4) Analytic power calculation for Non-binary SC-FDMA: In this portion we have analytically determined the peak power and average power of IDFT signals without using pulse shaping filter. For our simulation we have taken block size N=12, which then reduces to N=4 for non-Binary SC-FDMA and M- point DFT size = 384, hence the rolling factor Q=32. The data has been simulated for 10^5 numbers of runs. We have obtained results for BPSK and 8-QAM modulation schemes for both binary and non binary cases, which is shown in table 1

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TABLE 1 PEAK AND AVERAGE POWER VALUES OF SC-FDMA SIGNAL

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Peak Power (watt) 0.0011 0.0010 0.0098

Average Power (watt) 6.5047*10- 4 0.0010 0.0098

Modulation scheme used 8 - QAM BPSK 8 - QAM

Fig. 7 BER comparison between binary and Non binary for localized and interleaved subcarrier mapping using PedA channel for, M = 384, N = 12, using BPSK modulation for binary case and 8-QAM for Non Binary case

The peak power of the SC-FDMA signal is almost the same for Binary and Non-binary case but the average power is different. The average power of non-binary SC-FDMA signal is less than that of Binary case SC-FDMA signal.

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E. Effect of Non-Binary SC-FDMA on total number of users at a time: The maximum number of users in a cell that can access the network at a time equals Q = M / N; where M is the total number of subcarriers and N is the number of subcarriers allocated for each user in other words input block size. In our research here we are using M=512 and N=128. For NonBinary case M remains the same and N reduces for different M-ary systems. As (M-ary)i = 2i , where (i=1,2,3,4,5,6,7) N block size becomes N/=N/i, so Q=M / N/, As N/ reduces Q increases which shows that the total number of users increases. In our research we are taking i=1, 2,, 7; the result is shown in fig 9.
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[3] H. Sari, G. Karam, and I. Jeanclaude, Transmission Techniques for Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcasting, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 100-109, Feb. 1995. [4] D. Falconer, S. L. Ariyarisitakul, A. Benyamin-Seeyar,and B. Eidson, Frequency Domain Equalization for Single-Carrier Broadband Wireless Systems, IEEE Commun. Mag., vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 58-66, Apr. 2002. [5] H. G. Myung, J. Lim, and D. J. Goodman, Single Carrier FDMA for Uplink Wireless Transmission, IEEE Vehicular Technology Mag., vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 30 38, Sep. 2006. [6] H. G. Myung, J. Lim and D. J. Goodman, Peak-to-Average Power Ratio of Single Carrier FDMA Signals with Pulse Shaping, in Proc. Of the IEEE PIMRC, pp. 1-5, Sep. 2006. [7] M. Schnell and I. De Broeck, Application of IFDMA to Mobile Radio Transmission, Proc. IEEE 1998 International Conference on Universal Personal Communications (ICUPC '98), Florence, Italy, pp. 1267-1272, Oct. 1998.

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Fig.9 Effect of Non-binary SC-FDMA on number of users

V. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we have given a proposal of non-binary SCFDMA for 3GPP LTE uplink. Our simulation results have shown that introducing non-binary SCFDMA into the LTE uplink performs better than binary SC-FDMA in certain cases. Such as the number of users increases by three times using Non-Binary (octal) SC-FDMA, By considering different channels simulation results shows that BER is decreased in most of the cases as compared to binary SC-FDMA, for both LFDMA and IFDMA subcarrier mapping schemes and the most prominent results are obtained in the case of VehA channel. Moreover, the average power of SC-FDMA signals reduced in case of non-binary SCFDMA. Our future work is based on finding Non-binary algorithms for MIMO SC-FDMA. And the effect of Nonbinary SC-FDMA on throughput and latency REFERENCES
[1] L. Cimini Jr., Analysis and Simulation of a Digital Mobile Channel Using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, IEEE Trans. On Commun. vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 400-411, July 1985. [2] R. van Nee and R. Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Multimedia Communications, Artech House, 2000.

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