The LTE uplink is based on a variant of the OFDM transmission scheme known as SC-

FDM. SC-FDM reduces the instantaneous power observerd in OFDM transmission.

 Therefore, it is better choice for the design of low-power amplifier suitable for user
terminals (UE).

The way SC-FDM is implemented in the LTE standard is by essentially preceding the
OFDM modulator with a DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) precoder. This technique is
known as Discrete Fourier Transform-Spread Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (DFTS-OFDM).

Why did UL choose SC-FDMA/ DFTS-OFDM?

 Keep the advantages of OFDMA which is multi carrier transmission and therefore
an efficient use of the available bandwidth; possibility for FDMA with flexible
bandwidth assignment (by dynamically adjusting the tx DFT size M => the size of
the block of modulation symbols. Furthermore, by shifting the IDFT inputs to
which the DFT outputs are mapped => can adjust the exact frequency-domain
“position” ) and low-complexity high-quality equalization in FD(a cyclic
prefix???)
 Combines this one with the advantages of a Single Carrier (SC) transmission: the
lower peak to average power ratio (PAPR) is shown in Figure 4.9/ small variation in
the instantaneous power of the transmitted signal . (Why??) As can be seen, the
PAPR is significantly lower for DFTS-OFDM, compared to OFDM.

How to generate SC-FDMA?

DFTS-OFDM Transmission: The basic principle of DFTS-OFDM transmission is
illustrated in Figure 4.8. One way to inter-pret DFTS-OFDM is as normal OFDM with
a DFT-based precoding. In case of DFTS-OFDM, a block of M modulation symbols
from some modulation alphabet ( QPSK, 16QAM,…), is first applied to a size-M DFT
(from time domain to frequency domain). The output of the DFT is then applied to
consecutive inputs (subcarriers) of an OFDM modulator where, in pratice, the OFDM
modulator (from frequency domain to time domain) will be implemented as a size-N
inverse DFT (IDFT). Also, similar to normal OFDM, a cyclic prefix (CP) is inserted
for each transmittes block.
+ If the DFT size M = IDFT size N (M = N)
 DFT/IDFT processing would completely cancel each other out.

+ If (M < N)

 The unused inputs to the IDFT are set to 0, the output of the IDFT will be a signal
with “single-carrier” properties – that is, a signal with low power variantions, ans
with a bandwisth that depends on M.

DFTS-OFDM Receiver: The operations are basically the reverse of those for the
DFTS-OFDM signal generation of Figure 4.8 – that is, remove CP, then size N DFT
(FFT) processing, removal of the frequency samples (not corresponding to the signal
to be received), and size- M inverse DFT (IDFT) processing. In the ideal case, with no
signal corruption on the radio channel, DFTS-OFDM demodulation according to
Figure 4.10.
However, in the case of a time-dispersive or, equivalently, a frequency-selective
radio channel, the DFTS-OFDM signal will be corrupted, with “self-interference” as a
consequence. This can be understood in two ways (???) [4]:
1. Being a wideband single-carrier signal, the DFTS-OFDM spread signal is obviously
corrupted in the case of a time-dispersive channel.
2. If the channel is frequency selective over the span of the DFT, the inverse DFT at the
receiver will not be able to correctly reconstruct the original block of transmitted
symbols.
 An equalizer is needed to compensate for the radio-channel frequency selectivity.
As shown in Fig 4.11.
 First of all, there’s another block in the signal processing chain: DFT (Discrete
Fourier Transform) “pre-coding” is performed on modulated data symbols to
transform them from time into frequency domain. Afterwards, there’s subcarrier
mapping as an OFDM & an IFFT to transfer the signal form FD into TD.
After the parallel serial conversation the cyclic prefix is inserted. The last two blocks
are the same as for OFDM so there’s no difference to the DL

- DFT “pre-coding” is performed on modulated data symbols to transform them into

FD
- Sub-carrier mapping allows flexible allocation of signal to available sub-carriers
- IFFT and cyclic prefix (CP) insertion as in OFDM.
- Each subcarrier carries a portion of superposed (???) DFT spread data symbols
therefore SC-FDMA is also referred to as DFT-spread-OFDM (DFT-s-OFDM) (???)

The DFT precoding is the essential difference between DL & UL

What does DFT do?
 First of all it is a mathematical operation, but compared to OFDM in the DL where
each subcarrier carries just one specific modulation, the DFT texts a symbol and
spread this one over the available subcarrier in that meta each subcarrier carries a
portion of superposed symbols. Therefore, SC FDMA is also referred to as DFT
spread OFDM.
 **Similar to OFDM signal, but…

- In OFDMA, each sub-carrier only carries information related to one specific

symbol(???).
- In SC-FDMA, each sub-carrier contains information of ALL transmitted symbols.

How the Subcarrier mapping is realized in the UL?

 There are two possibilities each coming

+ First, localized mapping mode: the modulation symbols are assigned to adjacent
subcarriers

Localized
the output of the DFT is mapped to
consecutive inputs of the OFDM
modulator such as Fig 4.8
the spectrum of the localized DFTS-OFDM
signal clearly indicates a single-carrier
transmission
Distributed
the output of the DFT to equidistant
inputs of the OFDM modulator with
zeros inserted in between, as illustrated
in Figure 4.13. This can also be
referred to as
Distributed DFTS-OFDM.