Adaptive modulation and coding for BIC-UFMC

and BIC-OFDM systems taking CFO into account.

E. Debels, P. Del Fiorentino, C. Vitiello, J. Van Hecke, F. Giannetti, M. Luise, V. Lottici and M. Moeneclaey
TELIN Dept., Universiteit Gent, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, B-9000 Gent, Belgium
Information Engineering Dept., University of Pisa, I-56122 Pisa, Italy.
E-mail: Erica.Debels@UGent.be, p.delfiorentio@ing.unipi.it, carmine.vitiello@for.unipi.it, filippo.giannetti@iet.unipi.it
marco.luise@unipi.it, vincenzo.lottici@iet.unipi.it, Jeroen.Vanhecke@UGent.be, Marc.Moeneclaey@UGent.be

Abstract—The performance of multicarrier systems can be
considerably degraded because of inter-carrier interference (ICI)
caused by a carrier frequency offset (CFO) between the trans-
mitter and the receiver. A recently developed multicarrier mod-
ulation technique, referred to as uniform filtered multicarrier
(UFMC), improves the robustness against CFO, thereby relaxing
the synchronization requirements, consequently providing energy
efficient and low latency transmissions. However, the goodput
(GP) of the system still rapidly drops with increasing CFO
when using the classical adaptive modulation and coding (AMC)
schemes based on the SNRs of the subcarriers, because they
ignore the presence of the CFO-induced ICI. To tackle this
problem, this contribution performs the AMC, also taking into
account the ICI caused by the CFO, and thereby achieving a
significant increase of the GP.
Index Terms—UFMC, BIC, Adaptive modulation and coding,
Goodput, CFO
I. I NTRODUCTION
The fast growing network of devices connected to the inter-
net leads to the need of a fifth generation (5G) communication
network which is able to deal with diverse traffic types, such
as short sporadic packets and normal broadband traffic [1], [2],
[4], [5]. In this context, the fourth generation (4G) waveform,
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), may not
be the best choice. Due to its high spectral sidelobes, a
strict synchronization is necessary to maximize the OFDM
system performance. This strict synchronization requirement
will be a huge drawback for certain new types of wireless
communication such as the Internet of Things (IoT), where
low cost and low latency requirements will not allow for
complex synchronization algorithms [6]. Because of its high
sensitivity to a poorly compensated carrier frequency offset
(CFO), OFDM could become unsuitable for future generation
networks. A promising solution proposed to overcome this
problem is the universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) system,
which is a trade-off between filter-bank based multicarrier
(FBMC), where every subcarrier is individually filtered, and
OFDM, where filtering is not applied. UFMC is a novel modu-
lation technique where subcarriers are grouped into subbands,
in which IFFT and filtering are performed [7]. It has the
advantage over OFDM of reducing the side lobe level and
the ICI in case of a CFO, and has the advantage over FBMC
of being able to use shorter filters, thereby decreasing the
complexity [8].
However, despite the better performance of UFMC com-
pared to OFDM in the presence of a CFO, the performance in
terms of GP, with the GP defined as the number of correctly re-
ceived information bits per unit of time, still decreases rapidly
with increasing CFO, even when the subband filter length has
been optimized in the presence of a CFO [5], [9], [14]. The
main cause for this reduced GP is the adaptive modulation and
coding (AMC) algorithm ignoring the interference caused by a
CFO, yielding a higher packet error rate (PER) than anticipated
because of selecting too large constellation sizes and code
rates. In this contribution we modify the AMC algorithm
by taking into account the interference caused by the CFO;
more specifically, the signal to interference plus noise ratio
(SINR) instead of the signal to noise ratio (SNR) of each
individual subcarrier will be used in the estimated GP metric.
This method will reduce the PER by selecting the constellation
sizes and code rate in accordance with not only the amount
of noise but also interference, which results in a significant
improvement of the GP performance.
The contribution organizes as follows: Section II outlines
the system and channel model of the packed-oriented systems
bit interleaved coded (BIC) -UFMC and BIC-OFDM. Section
III describes the effect of the CFO and calculates the SINR
when a CFO is present. Section IV shows the GP performance
when including the SINR in the AMC algorithm, while section
V draws the conclusions of this paper.
Throughout the paper the following notations are used:
lowercase and uppercase bold symbols refer to time-domain
and frequency-domain vectors, respectively; [·]T denotes the
transpose operator, IN is the N xN identity matrix, |D| is the
cardinality of the set D, x is the lower integer of x, and
x ∼ Nc (0, R) indicates that x is a complex-valued circular
symmetric Gaussian random vector with zero mean and auto-
covariance matrix R.
II. S YSTEM MODEL
We consider the transmission of packets, with a length of
Nu bits. These Nu bits consist of Np bits of payload and
NCRC cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bits. The bit interleaved
coded (BIC) modulation block encodes the Nu bits using a
code of rate r, selected from the set Dr = {r0 , r1 , ..., r|Dr |−1 },
and interleaves the coded bits. The interleaved coded bits are
allocated to N subcarriers according to a bitloading vector

978-1-5090-4361-3/16/$31.00 2016
c IEEE
m = [m, ..., mN −1 ]T with mn ∈ Dm = {0, ..., mmax }, where
mn denotes the number of bits allocated to the nth subcarrier. ࢄ૙ ܰிி் െ ‫࢞ ܶܨܨܫ‬૙ ˆ‹Ž–‡” ࢠ૙ ࢅ

… …
0
The bits on the nth subcarrier are Gray mapped onto complex 0 P/S ࢗ૙ ࢝
symbols from the unit energy 2mn -QAM constellation. The 0

……
…
0
ܰிி் െ ‫࢞ ܶܨܨܫ‬૚ ˆ‹Ž–‡” ࢠ૚ …Šƒ‡Ž ࢟
code rate r and the bitloading (BL) vector m are selected ࢄ૚ S/P

……
ʹܰிி் -FFT

… …
0 P/S ࢗ૚ ࢎ
0
according to the AMC algorithm [10].

…
In the case of UFMC, the resulting symbol vector 0
ܰிி் െ ‫࡮ࢠ ”‡–Ž‹ˆ ࡮࢞ ܶܨܨܫ‬

…
0
X=[X(0), ...., X(N − 1)]T is split over B subbands, each ࢄ࡮ P/S ࢗ࡮

…
composed of D = N/B subcarriers. The symbols assigned
to the ith subband (with i ∈ {0, 1, ..., B − 1}) are given by
Xi = [X(iD), ..., X((i + 1)D − 1)]T . To each Xi , an IFFT
Fig. 1. UFMC architecture
of size NFFT is applied, with the symbols from the other
subbands set to zero, yielding B time-domain signals xi , i.e.,
ࢅ
NFFT
−1 ࢝
1 −j2π Nmn
ࢄ
xi (m) = √ Xi (n)e FFT (1)
NFFT n=0
ܰிி் -IFFT ࢞
࢟
…Šƒ‡Ž CP removal

……

……
S/P

for m ∈ {0, 1, ..., NFFT − 1}; note that Xi (n) = 0 for
∀n ∈/ {iD, iD + 1, ..., iD + D − 1}. The signals xi are then
filtered by a frequency-shifted Dolph-Chebyshev filter with
finite impulse response (FIR), qi , of length L, realizing 60 dB
sidelobe suppression; the frequency shift for the ith subband
equals ωi = D−12 + iD subcarrier spacings. The resulting B
time-domain signals are summed and sent over the channel.
The duration of one UFMC symbol is NFFT + L − 1 samples.
In the case of OFDM, a NFFT -point IFFT is applied to the
symbol vector X, and the resulting time-domain signal is sent
over the channel after adding a cyclic prefix (CP) of LCP
samples.
The multicarrier symbols are sent over a frequency-selective
fading channel, characterized by its impulse response h with
length Lh . The OFDM receiver removes the LCP sam-
ples from the CP, and performs a NFFT -point FFT on the
next NFFT received samples. The UFMC receiver applies a
2NFFT -point FFT to the NFFT + L − 1 received samples
(padded with zeroes at the end) which correspond to the
UFMC symbol. At the receiver side, only the even-numbered
outputs of the 2NFFT -point FFT are kept, which are given by
NFFT +L−2
1  −j2π Nmn
Y (n) = √ y(m)e FFT (2)
NFFT m=0
for n ∈ {0, 1, ..., N − 1}, with y(m) denoting the received
UFMC signal.
In the absence of CFO, Y (n) in case of UFMC can be
written as
˜ + W̃ (n),
Y (n) = H(n)Qi(n) (n)X(n) + I(n) (3)
for n ∈ {0, 1, ..., 2N − 1}, where Qi (n) and H(n) are the
nth sample of the N -point FFT of qi and h, i(n) = n/D
is the subband index containing the subcarrier with index
n, and W̃ (n) is the 2nth sample of the 2NFFT -point FFT
of the NFFT + L − 1 time-domain noise samples w with
w ∼ Nc (0, N0 IN ). The term I(n)˜ represents the interference
caused by the dispersive channel. The interference consists of
inter symbol interference (ISI), due to the dispersive channel,
and inter carrier interference (ICI) due to the non-orthogonality
……
CP insert.
P/S ࢎ ܰிி் -FFT
Fig. 2. OFDM architecture
of UFMC. However, in case of zero CFO, this interference can
˜
be neglected [9], so we set I(n) = 0 in the sequel.
For OFDM, the receiver keeps the first N samples of the
NFFT -point FFT, which are given by
Y (n) = H(n)X(n) + W (n), (4)
for n = 0, 1, ..., N − 1, with X(n) the nth data symbol, and
W (n) and H(n) the NFFT -point FFT of w and h respectively.
We note that there is no interference term present in (4),
because the subcarrier signals are perfectly orthogonal and
ISI is not present, when LCP ≥ Lh − 1. At the receiver
−1
side, Y (n) is scaled
−1 with H(n) in case of OFDM and with
H(n)Qi(n) (n) in case of UFMC.
The block diagrams of the systems for UFMC and OFDM
are depicted in figures 1 and 2, respectively.
The adaptive coding and modulation (AMC) block at the
transmitter looks for the optimal transmission mode (TM)
vector Φ∗ = (r∗ , m∗ ), with m the bitloading vector and r
the code rate, which maximizes the GP. The GP, expressing
the number of useful information bits correctly decoded by
the receiver per unit of time and frequency, is a representative
link performance metric. As the exact GP is a complicated
function of the SNRs on the individual subcarriers, we will
instead perform the AMC by maximizing the estimated GP
(EGP), which can be expressed in terms of a scalar effective
SNR.
For UFMC, the SNR associated with the nth subcarrier is
given by
2
|H(n)|2 |Qi(n) (n)|
γ(n) = (5)
N0
with i(n) denoting the index of the subband which contains The resulting 2nth FFT output Y (n) can be represented as
the nth subcarrier. Neglecting the interference in (3), the EGP the sum of a linear combination of the symbols X(n ) and a
is expressed as noise contribution W̃ (n). Substituting y(m) from (8) in (2),
it can be shown after some computations that
NFFT Np
ζ(Φ, U ) = · [1 − θr (γeff )] (6) NF
F T −1 NFFT
−1
NFFT + L − 1 U · N
Y (n) = X(n ) Qi(n ) (l)H(l)·
with U = r NN−1 u
the number or multicarrier symbols re- n =0 l=0
n=0 mn
quired to send one packet and Φ the TM. The quantity θr (γeff ) F (n − l − )F (n − n − ) (10)
is the packet error rate (PER) on an AWGN channel for BPSK
mapping and code rate r, when operating at an SNR equal to for n = 0, 1, ..., N − 1, and
γeff , which is the effective SNR of the multicarrier system.
We calculate γeff according to the κESM link performance 1 − exp(−j2πu)
F (u) =  
prediction method from [11], which gives γeff as a function u
NFFT · 1 − exp −j2π NFFT
of the SNRs on the individual subcarriers:
 N −1
 Denoting by A(n, n , ) the coefficient of X(n ) in Y (n), we
1  define
γeff = −log N −1 α(mn )e−γ(n)β(mn ) (7)
n=0 mn n=0

where α(mn ) and β(mn ) are known functions of mn . 2N

FFT −1

In the case of OFDM, the EGP is obtained by replacing
in (6) L − 1 by LCP ; γeff is still given by (7), but γ(n) is
computed from (5) with Qi(n) (n) = 1.
III. E FFECT OF CFO
In the previous section, we considered zero CFO, in which
case the interference is zero (OFDM) or negligible (UFMC).
However, accurate synchronization involves a high complex-
ity; often a nonzero residual CFO is still present in the received
signal [14]. In the case of OFDM, the performance degrades
very rapidly with increasing CFO, because of the increasing
interference power due to loss of subcarrier orthogonality.
UFMC is more robust against CFO because its subband
filtering reduces the interference from out of subband carriers
[15]. However, even with UFMC, the performance degradation
is not negligible for increasing values of the CFO. To improve
the GP performance in the presence of CFO, we propose
to take the interference due to the CFO into account when
performing the AMC; more specifically, we will use the SINR
(rather than the SNR) on the subcarriers when computing the
EGP, on which the AMC is based.
Therefore, we first calculate the interference power in a
multicarrier symbol. The ISI due to the dispersive channel
is neglected further on, since the subband filtering serves as
a protection against the multipath channel [14]. For UFMC,
we can write the received time-domain signal after imperfect
CFO correction as
 NFFT
B−1 −1
y(m) = c(m; ) xi (k)htot,i (m − k) + w(m) (8)
i=0 k=0
for m ∈ {0, 1, ..., NF F T + L − 2}, with htot,i the convolution
of qi and h, and
c(m; ) = ej2πm/NFFT .
with denoting the CFO normalized to the subcarrier spacing.
At the receiver side a 2NFFT - point FFT is applied to y(m).
A(n, n , ) = Qi(n ) (l)H(l)F (n − l − )F (n − n − )
l=0
Note that A(n, n , 0) = Qi(n) (n)H(n)δn,n , with δn,n denot-
ing the Kronecker delta function, which is consistent with (3).
The SINR associated with the nth subcarrier is given by
|A(n, n, )|2
SINRUFMC (n; ) =  (11)
N0 + n =n |A(n, n , )|2
Applying a similar reasoning to OFDM, we obtain that [3]
|B(n, n, )|2
SINROFDM (n; ) =  (12)
N0 + n =n |B(n, n , )|2
with B(n, n , ) = H(n ) · F (n − n − ), the coefficient of
X(n ) in Y (n); note that B(n, n , 0) = H(n)δn,n , which
agrees with (4). For OFDM, the SINR decreases faster for
increasing , compared to UFMC.
In order to use SINRUFMC (k; ) or SINROFDM (k; ) in-
stead of the SNR γ(k) for performing AMC, we need perfect
channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), i.e., Qi (n),
H(n) and must be known. However, in practice typically
only Qi (n) and H(n) are known, but not . Assuming that
the residual CFO after synchronization has a zero mean
Gaussian distribution with variance σ2 which is known to
the transmitter, we compute the SINR for the nth subcarrier
by replacing in (11) |A(n, n , )|2 by E [|A(n, n , )|2 ] for
all (n, n ), where E [.] denotes expecation with respect to
. We use the SINR resulting from (7) for calculating the
EGP, which is the objective function to be maximized by the
AMC algorithm. Similarly, in the case of OFDM we replace
in (12) |B(n, n , )|2 by E [|B(n, n , )|2 ] for all (n, n ). For
(9)
both multicarrier modulations, an increasing σ2 not only yields
more interference power, but also reduces the useful signal
power.
 System parameter Value
# information bits (Np ) 1024 2.5
# CRC bits (NCRC ) 32
# subcarriers (N ) 120 OFDM, traditional AMC
# subbands (B) 10 OFDM, new AMC
FFT size (NFFT ) 1024 UFMC, traditional AMC
2
UFMC, new AMC
Subcarrier spacing (Δ) 10 MHz/1024
# bits per subcarrier (Dm ) {2,4,6}
code rates (Dr ) {1/2,2/3,3/4,5/6}
Distance transmitter-receiver 141 m 1.5
Cyclic prefic length (LCP ) 72

GP
Subband filter length (L) 73
1
TABLE I
S YSTEM PARAMETERS

0.5

IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS 0

0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1
In this section, a comparison is made of the AMC al- σ2
gorithms, using either the SNR (ignoring the CFO) or the
Fig. 3. GP for both OFDM and UFMC for both AMC strategies when SNR0
SINR (using the distribution of the CFO), for both OFDM = 15 dB.
and UFMC. The comparion is made in terms of the actual
GP, obtained from a simulation consisting of transmitting
and decoding a large number of independent packets and 2.5
adding the number of information bits in the correctly decoded OFDM, traditional AMC
OFDM, new AMC
packets. In the simulations, the extended vehicular A (EVA) UFMC, traditional AMC
channel model [12] and the modified COST231 Hata path loss 2
UFMC, new AMC
model from [13] are implemented considering independent
channel realizations for each transmitted packet. The system 1.5
parameters are summarized in Table I. Note that we have taken
GP

L = LCP + 1, since it has been claimed that the optimal

subband filter length for UFMC is approximately the same as 1
the CP length in OFDM system, and this allows a coexistance
of the two multicarrier waveforms [14]. For further use, we
define SNR0 = E[|X|2 ]/N0 . 0.5

Figure 3 shows the actual GP as a function of σ2 for OFDM

and UFMC, with AMC based on either the SNR (referred to
as traditional AMC) or the average SINR (referred to as new
AMC), at SNR0 = 15 dB. For both AMC strategies and both
multicarrier modulations, the GP decreased with increasing
σ2 . For a given AMC strategy, UFMC outperforms OFDM;
for a given multicarrier format, the new AMC performs better
than the traditional AMC. For large σ2 , the GP for OFDM
with traditional AMC gets close to zero; OFDM with the new
AMC and UFMC with traditional AMC yield about the same
GP, but a substantial gain is achieved for UFMC with the new
AMC.
In figure 4 the actual GP is displayed as a function of the
actual value of , with the new AMC method using σ2 =
0.025. For small , the GP performance for the new AMC
is worse compared to the traditional AMC, because the latter
assumes = 0. However, already for > 0.001 the new AMC
method outperforms the traditional AMC method.
Figure 5 shows the actual GP for a zero-mean Gaussian traditional AMC method, the new AMC reduces the code rate
with variance σ2 = 0.025 as a function of SNR0 . For OFDM
with the traditional AMC, the GP is almost independent of
SNR0 , due to the dominant effect of the interference compared
to the noise power N0 . The gain of the new AMC method over
0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1

Fig. 4. GP for varying  for both AMC strategies when new AMC method
uses σ2 = 0.025, and SNR0 = 15 dB.
the traditional AMC for the given σ2 is valid for the simulated
SNR0 range from 5 to 25 dB.
V. C ONCLUSION
The traditional AMC, based on the SNRs of the subcarriers
of OFDM and UFMC systems, yields a poor GP performance
in the presence of a CFO, due to the interference caused by
the latter. We have achieved a substantial increase of the GP
by applying a new AMC method, based on the average SINR
(rather than the SNR) of each subcarrier. Compared to the
and constellation sizes according to the average interference
power obtained from the statistical distribution of the CFO,
thereby achieving a lower packet error rate and substantially
increasing the GP.
 [14] L. Zhang, A. Ijaz, P. Xiao, M. Imran, R. Tafazolli, “MU-UFMC
1.8 System Performance Analysis and Optimal Filter Length and Zero
OFDM, traditional AMC Padding Length Design”arXiv:1603.09169 [cs.IT], Submitted to IEEE
1.6 OFDM, new AMC Transactions on Signal Processing
UFMC, traditional AMC [15] A. Aminjavaheri, A. Farhang, A. RezazadehReyhani, B. Farhang-
1.4 UFMC, new AMC Boroujeny, “Impact of timing and frequency offsets on multicarrier
waveform candidates for 5G”, IEEE Signal Processing and Signal
1.2 Processing Education Workshop (SP/SPE), Aug. 2015

1
GP

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
5 10 15 20 25
SNR0 [dB]

Fig. 5. GP for σ2 = 0.025 and varying SNR.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research has been funded by the Interuniversity Attrac-
tion Poles Programme initiated by the Belgian Science Policy
Office.

R EFERENCES
[1] X. Wang, T. Wild, F. Schaich, S. ten Brink, “Pilot-aided Channel
Estimation for Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier”, Vehicular Technology
Conference (VTC Fall), Sept. 2015.
[2] X. Wang, T. Wild, F. Schaich, A. Fonseca Dos Santos, “Universal Fil-
tered Multi-Carrier with Leakage-Bssed Filter Optimization”, European
Wireless Conf., 2014.
[3] B. Xie, W. Qiu, H. Minn “Exact Signal Model and New Carrier
Frequency Offset Compensation Scheme for OFDM” IEEE Trans. on
Wireless Comm., Vol. 11, No.2, pp. 550-555, Febr. 2012.
[4] G. Wunder et al. “5G NOW: Non-Orthogonal, Asynchronous Waveforms
for Future Mobile applications”, IEEE Comm. Mag., vol. 52, no. 2, pp.
97-105, Febr. 2014.
[5] X. Wang, T. Wild, F. Shaich “Filter Optimization for Carrier-Frequency-
and Timing-Offset in Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier Systems” Vehic-
ular Tech. Conference (VTC Spring), May 2015.
[6] C. Vitiello, P. Del Fiorentino, E. Debels, V. Lottici, F. Gianetti, M.
Luise, M. Moeneclaey, “ Two-Step Resource Allocation for BIC-UFMC
Wireless Communications”, presented to ISWCS 2016
[7] V. Vakilian, T. Wild, F. Schaich, S. ten Brink, J. Frigon, “Universal
Filtered Multi-Carrier Technique for Wireless Systems Beyond LTE”,
9th Int. Workshop on Broadband Wireless Acces, Globecom, Dec. 2013
[8] M. Mukherjee, L. Shu, P. Kumar, R. Matam, “Reduced out-of-band
radiation-based filter optimization for UFMC systems in 5G”, Wireless
Comm. and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC), 2015..
[9] P. Del Fiorentino, C. Vitiello, V. Lottici, F. Gianetti, M. Luise, E.
Debels, J. Van Hecke, M. Moeneclaey, “Resource Allocation in Short
Packets BIC-UFMC Transmission for Internet of Things”, Accepted to
GLOBECOM 2016
[10] I. Stupia, F. Giannetti, V. Lottici, L. Vandendorpe, “A Greedy Algoritm
for Goodput-Based Adaptive Modulation and Coding in BIC-OFDM
Systems”, European Wireless Conf. , pp. 608-615, April 2010.
[11] I. Stupia, V. Lottici, F. Giannetti, L. Vandendorpe, “Link Resource Adap-
tation for Multiantenna Bit-Interleaved Coded Multicarrier Systems”,
IEEE Trans. on Signal Proc., vol. 60, no., pp 3644-2656 July 2012
[12] Extended vehicular A (EVA) channel. Available:
http://www.raymaps.com/index.php/lte-multipath-channel-models.
[13] IEEE 802.16m Evaluation Methodology Document (EMD), “IEEE
802.16m-08/004r2”, pp 143, July 2008