4G Technology /OFDM:

What is a cyclic prefix

The basic concept behind the OFDM cyclic prefix is quite straightforward. The cyclic prefix performs two main
functions.

 The cyclic prefix provides a guard interval to eliminate intersymbol interference from the previous symbol.
 It repeats the end of the symbol so the linear convolution of a frequency-selective multipath channel can be
modeled as circular convolution, which in turn may transform to the frequency domain via a discrete Fourier
transform. This approach accommodates simple frequency domain processing, such as channel estimation and
equalization.
The cyclic prefix is created so that each OFDM symbol is preceded by a copy of the end part of that same symbol.

Different OFDM cyclic prefix lengths are available in various systems. For example within LTE a normal length and
an extended length are available and after Release 8 a third extended length is also included, although not normally
used.

OFDM cyclic prefix

Cyclic prefix advantages and disadvantages

There are several advantages and disadvantages attached to the use for the cyclic prefix within OFDM.

Advantages
 Provides robustness: The addition of the cyclic prefix adds robustness to the OFDM signal. The data that is
retransmitted can be used if required.
 Reduces inter-symbol interference: The guard interval introduced by the cyclic prefix enables the effects of
inter-symbol interference to be reduced.
Disadvantages
 Reduces data capacity: As the cyclic prefix re-transmits data that is already being transmitted, it takes up
system capacity and reduces the overall data rate.
The use of a cyclic prefix is standard within OFDM and it enables the performance to be maintaiend even under
conditions when levels of reflections and multipath propagation are high.
Multicarrier modulation, MCM is a technique for transmitting data by sending the data over
multiple carriers which are normally close spaced.

Multicarrier modulation has several advantages including resilience to interference, resilience to narrow band fading and
multipath effects.

As a result, multicarrier modulation techniques are widely used for data transmission as it is able to provide an effective
signal waveform which is spectrally efficient and resilient to the real world environment.

One form of multicarrier modulation is OFDM

Multicarrier modulation basics

Multicarrier modulation operates by dividing the data stream to be transmitted into a number of lower data rate data
streams. Each of the lower data rate streams is then used to modulate an individual carrier.

When the overall transmission is received, the receiver has to then re-assembles the overall data stream from those
received on the individual carriers.

It is possible to use a variety of different techniques for multicarrier transmissions. Each form of MCM has its own
advantages and can be sued in different applications.

What is OFDM?
OFDM is a form of multicarrier modulation. An OFDM signal consists of a number of closely spaced modulated carriers.
When modulation of any form - voice, data, etc. is applied to a carrier, then sidebands spread out either side. It is
necessary for a receiver to be able to receive the whole signal to be able to successfully demodulate the data. As a result
when signals are transmitted close to one another they must be spaced so that the receiver can separate them using a
filter and there must be a guard band between them. This is not the case with OFDM. Although the sidebands from each
carrier overlap, they can still be received without the interference that might be expected because they are orthogonal to
each another. This is achieved by having the carrier spacing equal to the reciprocal of the symbol period.

Traditional-slection if signals on different channels

To see how OFDM works, it is necessary to look at the receiver. This acts as a bank of demodulators, translating each
carrier down to DC. The resulting signal is integrated over the symbol period to regenerate the data from that carrier.
The same demodulator also demodulates the other carriers. As the carrier spacing equal to the reciprocal of the symbol
period means that they will have a whole number of cycles in the symbol period and their contribution will sum to zero -
in other words there is no interference contribution.

Basic concept of OFDM, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

One requirement of the OFDM transmitting and receiving systems is that they must be linear. Any non-linearity will cause
interference between the carriers as a result of inter-modulation distortion. This will introduce unwanted signals that
would cause interference and impair the orthogonality of the transmission.

In terms of the equipment to be used the high peak to average ratio of multi-carrier systems such as OFDM requires the
RF final amplifier on the output of the transmitter to be able to handle the peaks whilst the average power is much lower
and this leads to inefficiency. In some systems the peaks are limited. Although this introduces distortion that results in a
higher level of data errors, the system can rely on the error correction to remove them.

Data on OFDM
The traditional format for sending data over a radio channel is to send it serially, one bit after another. This relies on a
single channel and any interference on that single frequency can disrupt the whole transmission.

OFDM adopts a different approach. The data is transmitted in parallel across the various carriers within the overall OFDM
signal. Being split into a number of parallel "substreams" the overall data rate is that of the original stream, but that of
each of the substreams is much lower, and the symbols are spaced further apart in time.

This reduces interference among symbols and makes it easier to receive each symbol accurately while maintaining the
same throughput.

The lower data rate in each stream means that the interference from reflections is much less critical. This is achieved by
adding a guard band time or guard interval into the system. This ensures that the data is only sampled when the signal
is stable and no new delayed signals arrive that would alter the timing and phase of the signal. This can be achieved far
more effectively within a low data rate substream.
 Guard interval on OFDM signals
The distribution of the data across a large number of carriers in the OFDM signal has some further advantages. Nulls
caused by multi-path effects or interference on a given frequency only affect a small number of the carriers, the remaining
ones being received correctly. By using error-coding techniques, which does mean adding further data to the transmitted
signal, it enables many or all of the corrupted data to be reconstructed within the receiver. This can be done because
the error correction code is transmitted in a different part of the signal.

Key features of OFDM

The OFDM scheme differs from traditional FDM in the following interrelated ways:

 Multiple carriers (called subcarriers) carry the information stream

 The subcarriers are orthogonal to each other.
 A guard interval is added to each symbol to minimize the channel delay spread and intersymbol interference.

OFDM advantages & disadvantages

OFDM advantages
OFDM has been used in many high data rate wireless systems because of the many advantages it provides.

 Immunity to selective fading: One of the main advantages of OFDM is that is more resistant to frequency selective
fading than single carrier systems because it divides the overall channel into multiple narrowband signals that are
affected individually as flat fading sub-channels.
 Resilience to interference: Interference appearing on a channel may be bandwidth limited and in this way will not
affect all the sub-channels. This means that not all the data is lost.
 Spectrum efficiency: Using close-spaced overlapping sub-carriers, a significant OFDM advantage is that it makes
efficient use of the available spectrum.
 Resilient to ISI: Another advantage of OFDM is that it is very resilient to inter-symbol and inter-frame interference.
This results from the low data rate on each of the sub-channels.
 Resilient to narrow-band effects: Using adequate channel coding and interleaving it is possible to recover symbols
lost due to the frequency selectivity of the channel and narrow band interference. Not all the data is lost.
 Simpler channel equalisation: One of the issues with CDMA systems was the complexity of the channel
equalisation which had to be applied across the whole channel. An advantage of OFDM is that using multiple sub-
channels, the channel equalization becomes much simpler.
OFDM disadvantages
Whilst OFDM has been widely used, there are still a few disadvantages to its use which need to be addressed when
considering its use.

 High peak to average power ratio: An OFDM signal has a noise like amplitude variation and has a relatively high
large dynamic range, or peak to average power ratio. This impacts the RF amplifier efficiency as the amplifiers need
 to be linear and accommodate the large amplitude variations and these factors mean the amplifier cannot operate
with a high efficiency level.
 Sensitive to carrier offset and drift: Another disadvantage of OFDM is that is sensitive to carrier frequency offset
and drift. Single carrier systems are less sensitive.

OFDM, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing has gained a significant presence in the wireless market place. The
combination of high data capacity, high spectral efficiency, and its resilience to interference as a result of multi-path
effects means that it is ideal for the high data applications that have become a major factor in today's communications
scene.

BER performance over AWGN and Rayleigh fading.

In single carrier systems each symbol occupying an entire bandwidth could be lost due to frequency selective fading,
but when transmitted on low data parallel streams, symbol time increases and channel become flat fading. OFDM
structure basically relies on three principles: • The IFFT and FFT [6] are used for modulating and demodulating
individual OFDM sub carriers to transform the signal spectrum to the time domain for transmission over the channel
and then by employing FFT on the receiving end to recover data symbols in serial order. • The second key principle
is the cyclic prefix (CP) as Guard Interval (GI). CP keeps the transmitted signal periodic. One of the reasons to apply
CP is to avoid Inter Carrier Interference (ICI). • Interleaving is the third most important concept applied. The radio
channel may affect the data symbols transmitted on one or several sub carriers which lead to bit errors. To encounter
this issue we use efficient coding schemes.

Figure.1: Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix block diagram.

In OFDM, Guard Interval (GI) is introduced because of multipath propagation as it affects the symbols to delay and
attenuate, which causes Inter Symbol Interference (ISI). In GI, Cyclic Prefix (CP) is used to counter Inter Carrier
interference (ICI) within an OFDM frame. The CP is simply a copy of the last symbols of the samples placed first,
making the signal appear as periodic in the receiver as shown in Figure.1 Before demodulating the OFDM signal
the CP is removed. By exploiting the structure imposed using CP. Symbol synchronization can be achieved. Due to
the carrier orthogonality it is possible to use the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) and the Inverse Discrete Fourier
Transform (IDFT) for modulation and demodulation of the signal [1]. To obtain high spectral efficiency, there can
be different modulation schemes can be applied i.e. QPSK, 16-QAM, 64-QAM. We will be using 64 – QAM. When
compared with different modulations 64-QAM performs better for both the channels but increases the complexity
of the system [1]. Implementing various modulation techniques under different fading channels, the performance of
BER over Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is better for Rayleigh fading channel when compared with the AWGN and
Rician fading channels [4]. This paper generally deals with the performance of the OFDM system under Rayleigh,
Rician and AWGN fading environments using 64-QAM by increasing the OFDM.

OFDM Issues like PAPR, Frequency and Timing Offset

ORTHOGONAL Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a technique widely used in many digital communication
systems such us Digital Television (DTV), Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Terrestrial Digital Video
Broadcasting (DVB-T), Digital Suscriber Line (DSL) broadband internet access, standards for Wireless Local Area
Networks (WLANs), standards for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks (WMANs), and 4G mobile
communications. It has many advantages such us high bit rate, strong immunity to multipath and high spectral
efficiency. However, one of the most serious problems is the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the
transmitted OFDM signal, since this large peaks introduce a serious degradation in performance when the signal
passes through a nonlinear High-Power-Amplifier (HPA). The non-linearity of HAP leads to in-band distortion
which increases Bit Error Rate (BER), and out-of-band radiation, which causes adjacent channel interference. There
are several proposals to deal with the PAPR problem in OFDM systems [1], [2]. The different techniques can be
classified into different groups according to their characteristics. The most general classification is: clipping
techniques, coding techniques, the distortionless schemes with side information and distortionless techniques
without side information. The simplest implementation method is clipping technique, which consists in to
deliberately clip the OFDM signal before amplification [3]. Clipping can reduce PAPR but this is a nonlinear process
and may cause both in-band and out-of-band interference while destroying the orthogonality among the subcarriers.
Then, coding techniques are found, which are introduced in [6]. The key of those techniques is to select the
codewords that minimize the PAPR. In the next group we have the techniques that cause no distortion and create no
out-of-band radiation, but they may be require the transmission of the side information to the receiver. Techniques
that require the transmission of side information are for example Partial Transmit Sequence (PTS), Tone Reservation
(TR), etc. On the other hand SeLected Mapping (SLM), Constellation Extension or Orthogonal Pilot Sequences
(OPS) do not require the transmission of side information

Frequency and Timing Offset

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has gained considerable attention as a promising technique
for wireless transmission due to the highly desirable features such as bandwidth efficiency and immunity against
multipath propagation effects [1]. Consequently, OFDM has been considered by the research community and
industry for several applications and standards such as digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital video broadcasting-
terrestrial (DVB-T), WiMax technologies and the 4G LTE-Advanced [2]. Despite the major advantages, OFDM
systems are very sensitive to synchronization errors, particularly carrier frequency offsets (CFO) caused by
mismatch of the local oscillators between the transmitter and receiver. CFO has to be accurately estimated and
compensated to avoid intercarrier interference (ICI), which is introduced due to the loss of subcarriers’ orthogonality
[3]. Concurrently, CFO estimation for OFDM has received considerable attention and has been addressed in
numerous publications [3]-[11]. Generally speaking, CFO can be estimated using data-aided (DA) methods where
pilots, preambles or training sequences are inserted at the transmitter to assist the synchronization at the receiver
side [3][5]-[7]. For example, the estimator proposed in [5] utilizes low training overhead by exploiting the null-
subspace inherent in OFDM due to the limited length of the channel. Unfortunately, the majority of the CFO
estimation methods reported in the literature including [5] assume perfect timing synchronization. However, such
assumption is too idealistic in noisy frequency selective channels. Consequently, Chen et al. [7] propose two
maximum-likelihood (ML) estimators to combat the timing errors offset in the system explicitly using two
dimensional search or implicitly by embedding the timing offset in the channel response. Recently, non-data-aided
(NDA) also referred to as blind estimators have gained interest due to their bandwidth and power efficiency. In the
literature, several blind schemes have been proposed for CFO synchronization by exploiting the inherent structure
and some intrinsic information of OFDM symbols [4][8]-[11]. Some of these techniques operate in time domain,
such as the well referred-to CP based estimator (CPE) [4] and others operate in the frequency domain by exploiting
the Discrete Fourier transform (DFT) output to construct CFO estimators. For example, the kurtosis, which measures
the Gaussianity of a random sequence, is used in [8] to construct the cost function for fine CFO estimation. In [9],
the estimation is performed by minimizing the variance of the ICI which is proportional to the CFO. Minimizing the
power difference between adjacent subcarriers is proposed in [10] to deduce an efficient CFO estimator. However,
its performance is highly dependent on the channel fading conditions where the performance degrades drastically in
highly frequency selective fading channels. Recently, an estimator, which is robust over frequency selective
channels is reported in [11] by performing power difference measurements in the time direction over two consecutive
symbols.
 Chapter 1
Elements of Digital Communication
The elements which form a digital communication system is represented by the following block diagram
for the ease of understanding.

Following are the sections of the digital communication system.

Source
The source can be an analog signal. Example: A Sound signal
Input Transducer
This is a transducer which takes a physical input and converts it to an electrical signal (Example:
microphone). This block also consists of an analog to digital converter where a digital signal is needed
for further processes.
A digital signal is generally represented by a binary sequence.
Source Encoder
The source encoder compresses the data into minimum number of bits. This process helps in effective
utilization of the bandwidth. It removes the redundant
bits unnecessaryexcessbits,i.e.,zeroesunnecessaryexcessbits,i.e.,zeroes.
Channel Encoder
The channel encoder, does the coding for error correction. During the transmission of the signal, due to
the noise in the channel, the signal may get altered and hence to avoid this, the channel encoder adds
some redundant bits to the transmitted data. These are the error correcting bits.
Digital Modulator
The signal to be transmitted is modulated here by a carrier. The signal is also converted to analog from
the digital sequence, in order to make it travel through the channel or medium.
Channel
The channel or a medium, allows the analog signal to transmit from the transmitter end to the receiver
end.
Digital Demodulator
This is the first step at the receiver end. The received signal is demodulated as well as converted again
from analog to digital. The signal gets reconstructed here.
Channel Decoder
The channel decoder, after detecting the sequence, does some error corrections. The distortions which
might occur during the transmission, are corrected by adding some redundant bits. This addition of bits
helps in the complete recovery of the original signal.
Source Decoder
The resultant signal is once again digitized by sampling and quantizing so that the pure digital output is
obtained without the loss of information. The source decoder recreates the source output.
Output Transducer
This is the last block which converts the signal into the original physical form, which was at the input of
the transmitter. It converts the electrical signal into physical output (Example: loud speaker).
Output Signal
This is the output which is produced after the whole process. Example − The sound signal received.
This unit has dealt with the introduction, the digitization of signals, the advantages and the elements of
digital communications. In the coming chapters, we will learn about the concepts of Digital
communications, in detail.