Journée scientifique ENSTA

Transmission and Multiple Access

Techniques for Broadband Wireless
Access Networks

Hikmet Sari
SUPELEC, Plateau de Moulon, 3 rue Joliot-Curie
F-91192 Gif sur Yvette, France

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 1

 Presentation Outline

‰ BWA at frequencies between 2 and 11 GHz.

‰ Propagation problems and channel modeling.
‰ Discussion on channel equalization.
‰ IEEE 802.16 transmission and multiple access
technologies: OFDM, SCT, OFDMA
‰ Other advanced technologies
‰ Summary and conclusions

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 2

 Introduction

‰ BWA was originally viewed as a fixed access technology

to compete with ADSL and cable.
‰ Recently, there has been a shift in the service
requirements to supply mobile services as well.
‰ IEEE 802.16 specifications were developed for fixed
services, and IEEE 802.16e specifications aim at enabling
mobile services.
‰ Frequencies in the 2 – 11 GHz band.
‰ Formation of the WiMax Forum.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 3

 A Review of BWA

‰ Fixed BWA takes the form of a cellular network, where

each base station (BS) serves the subscribers located in its
coverage area.
‰ Each user is assigned to a predetermined BS, and
directional subscriber antennas are pointed to the serving
BS during installation.
‰ At millimeter waves, the cell size does not exceed a few
kilometers and propagation is based on clear line-of-sight
(LOS).
‰ At microwave frequencies below 11 GHz, attenuation is
smaller and the cell size can span several tens of
kilometers.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 4

 A Review of BWA (cont’d)

‰ The subscriber antenna directivity in the 2 – 11 GHz is

much smaller than at millimeter-wave frequencies. The 3
dB beamwidth of subscriber antennas is higher than 20°
and omni-directional antennas are actually needed for
mobile reception.
‰ In Europe and other regions which use the CEPT
channeling, the channel bandwidth is of the form 112/2n
MHz, where n is an integer. Typical channel values are 7
MHz and 3.5 MHz.
‰ In North America, the channel spacing is of the form of
80/2n MHz, and typical values are 10 and 5 MHz.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 5

 Channel Characteristics

‰ The channel is characterized by the path loss (including

shadowing), multipath delay spread, fading
characteristics, Doppler spread, as well as adjacent
channel and co-channel interferences.
‰ The path loss only affects the link budget and the Doppler
spread is very small, particularly in fixed and nomadic
reception.
‰ Therefore, what truly characterize BWA channels based on
NLOS propagation are the multipath delay profile and the
fading characteristics.
‰ Channel dispersion (multipath delay profile) depends on
the cell size, terrain and antennas used.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 6

 Channel characteristics (cont’d)

‰ On some broadband wireless access (BWA) channels, the

multipath delay spread spans less than 1 µs, but in some
other cases, it spans 10 or even 20 µs.
‰ To assess performance of fixed BWA systems operating
between 2 and 11 GHz, the IEEE 802.16 group adopted the
Stanford University Interim (SUI) channel models all of
which are characterized by three paths.
‰ The table on the next slide gives the rms value of the delay
spread and the delay and attenuation of each propagation
path of the SUI models. These are averaged values, each
path being also affected by Rayleigh fading.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 7

 SUI Channel Models

Model Tap 1 Tap 2 Tap 3 rms delay (µs)

SUI 1 0 0.4 0.9 0.111
0 - 15 - 20
SUI 2 0 0.4 1.1 0.202
0 - 12 - 15
SUI 3 0 0.4 0.9 0.264
0 -5 - 10
SUI 4 0 1.5 4 1.257
0 -4 -8
SUI 5 0 4 10 2.842
0 -5 - 10
SUI 6 0 14 20 5.240
0 - 10 - 14

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 8

 Discussion

‰ The channel dispersion in SUI 4 – SUI 6 models covers a

large number of symbol periods. On a 7 MHz channel, the
symbol period is 178 ns, and the SUI 5 model spans 56
symbol period.
‰ The SUI 5 model dispersion spans 112 symbol periods over
a 14 MHz channel and 224 symbol periods over a 28 MHz
channel.
‰ The numbers above are doubled for the SUI 6 model
whose impulse response spans 20 µs.
‰ Therefore, the transmission technique to be used in these
systems must be able to compensate for channel impulse
responses spanning hundreds of symbol periods.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 9

 IEEE 802.16 Technologies

‰ The IEEE 802.16 specifications include three different

transmission and multiple access technologies.
‰ The first one is orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
(OFDM) for transmission and TDMA for multiple access.
‰ The second is single-carrier transmission (SCT), which is as
efficient as OFDM when combined with frequency-domain
equalization (FDE).
‰ The third technique is orthogonal frequency-division
multiple access (OFDMA).
‰ From those, only OFDM/TDMA has been selected by the
WiMax Forum for fixed services. In contrast, OFDMA is the
favored technology for mobile services (not voted yet).

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 10

 Optional Features

‰ Diversity techniques reduce sensitivity to fading events

that affect the channel tap values.
‰ Receive (Rx) diversity based on Maximum Ratio
Combining (MRC) is suitable for the uplink.
‰ Rx diversity is not suitable for the downlink as it increases
the subscriber terminal complexity. Alamouti’s transmit
(Tx) diversity is used instead (optional).
‰ The IEEE 802.16 specifications also include optional MIMO
configurations with 2, 3 or 4 transmit and receive
antennas. These systems can trade off throughput and
diversity.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 11

 The Principle of OFDM
‰ OFDM is a multicarrier transmission technique, in which the
frequency spacing between adjacent carriers is equal to the
inverse of the symbol period.
‰ An OFDM system with N carriers uses an N-point inverse
Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) at the transmitter and an
N-point forward DFT at the receiver.
‰ The basic idea is to split the total channel bandwidth into N
narrow sub-channels with an essentially flat frequency
response. To do so, the number of carriers N must be
sufficiently large.
‰ The incoming data symbols are grouped into N-symbol
blocks, and each symbol of the block is transmitted at a
separate carrier.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 12

 The Principle of OFDM (cont’d)

‰ The transmitted symbols are affected by the phase and

attenuation of the channel frequency response at the
corresponding carrier frequencies.
‰ The decision error probability for a transmitted symbol is a
function of the channel attenuation at the carrier frequency
at which this symbol is transmitted.
‰ The symbols transmitted at carrier frequencies with a
strong channel attenuation suffer from a high error rate
and need to be protected.
‰ Therefore, OFDM cannot be used on highly frequency-
selective channels without error correction coding or some
form of precoding to disperse the symbol energy.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 13

 OFDM Specifications

‰ In the IEEE 802.16 specifications, the number of carriers is

256 and the cyclic prefix can have up to 64 samples (a
quarter of an OFDM symbol).
‰ On a 7-MHz channel, a 64-sample prefix can absorb
64x178 = 11.39 μs of channel dispersion, which is
sufficient for all SUI channel models except SUI-6.
‰ For the SUI 1 – SUI 3 models, the prefix size can be
reduced to 8 samples, reducing the overhead from 25% to
approximately 3%.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 14

 Single-Carrier Transmission
‰ The conventional approach to digital communications over
dispersive channels is single-carrier transmission with
time-domain equalization.
‰ Time-domain equalization covers the simple linear
transversal equalizers, decision-feedback equalizers, as
well as maximum-likelihood sequence estimation.
‰ These techniques have been in use for decades in voice-
band data transmission, digital microwave radio, and more
recently in mobile radio systems.
‰ Although frequency-domain channel equalization was
originally introduced in the late 1970s, it was not pursued
and quickly disappeared from the literature.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 15

 Frequency-Domain Equalization

‰ In the 1993-95 time period, the present author published

several papers which showed that SC/FDE can achieve the
performance of OFDM while avoiding its well-known
problems.

‰ H. Sari, G.Karam, and I. Jeanclaude, "Channel Equalization and Carrier

Synchronization in OFDM systems," presented at the Tirrenia Int.
Workshop on Digital Communications, September 1993, Italy.
‰ H. Sari, G.Karam, and I. Jeanclaude, "Transmission Techniques for
Digital Terrestrial TV Broadcasting," IEEE Communications Magazine, vol.
33, pp. 100-109, February 1995.

‰ These papers and some others from the same authors led
to the rebirth of SC/FDE and this technique was recently
adopted in the IEEE 802.16 specifications.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 16

 OFDM and SCT/FDE

Discrete Multiplier
IDFT Overall DFT Bank
Channel

(a) OFDM

Discrete Multiplier
Overall DFT Bank IDFT
Channel

(b) SCT/FDE

Basic building blocks in OFDM and SCT/FDE

transmitters and receivers.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 17

 The Limits of SCT/TDE
‰ Indeed, the optimum coefficients of a linear transversal
time-domain equalizer are the solution of the matrix
equation: −1
C=A V

‰ The conventional least mean squares algorithm for

coefficient adaptation at time k is

C k +1 = C k − αX k* ek

‰ The adaptation of all coefficients is driven by the same

error signal and consecutive input signals are correlated.
This is not a serious problem if the number of taps is
small, but the equalizer will have convergence problems
with a large number of taps.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 18

 Ease of Adaptation of SCT/FDE
‰ Consider next an FDE with N taps. The DFT operator which
forms the first stage of the equalizer gives N signal
samples denoted (Y1, Y2, …….., YN).

‰ These samples are sent to a complex multiplier bank whose

coefficients are denoted (F1, F2, …….., FN). The coefficient
values which minimize signal distortion are
H n*
Fn = 2
= 1
Hn Hn

‰ Clearly, each coefficient is only a function of the channel

frequency response at the corresponding frequency, and
the equalizer is easily adapted to channel variations even if
the number of taps is very large.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 19

 FDE vs. TDE

‰ From the above discussion, SCT/TDE is sufficient for

channels with a small delay spread, because these
channels can be equalized using a small number of taps.
‰ In contrast, SCT/FDE or OFDM is required on channels
with a large delay spread, as these channels require a
large number of taps and this leads to convergence and
tracking problems with SCT/TDE.
‰ In fact, these considerations indicate that the real
problem is not OFDM vs. SCT, but instead frequency-
domain vs. time-domain signal processing.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 20

 Complexity Considerations

‰ The normalized complexity of both OFDM and SCT/FDE is

proportional to log(N), whereas the complexity of
SCT/TDE grows linearly with the number of taps N.
‰ For N large, the complexity considerations clearly favor the
use of frequency-domain techniques.
‰ SCT/FDE avoids the well-known peak-to-average power
ratio (PAPR) of OFDM, which leads to an inefficient use of
the transmit power amplifier.
‰ Another important difference between SCT/FDE and OFDM
is related to frequency diversity. Since OFDM breaks the
frequency diversity, it requires powerful channel coding or
precoding to recover it. In contrast, SCT/FDE can work on
dispersive multipath channels without any coding.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 21

 Precoded OFDM Mimics SCT/FDE

‰ Precoding in OFDM disperses the energy of symbols over

the channel bandwidth, i.e., it restores the frequency
diversity broken by the IDFT operator.
‰ A common precoding matrix is the Walsh-Hadamard matrix
which uniformly spreads the symbol energy across the
channel bandwidth using orthogonal spreading sequences.
‰ Another precoding matrix that uniformly spreads the
symbol energy over the channel bandwidth is the DFT
matrix. This matrix cancels the IDFT matrix that generates
the OFDM signal and the system reduces to SCT/FDE.
‰ From this discussion, it is clear that Precoded OFDM mimics
SCT/FDE. That is, by precoding OFDM in order to restore
frequency diversity, we get an SCT/FDE-type system.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 22

 Frequency-Domain DFE

‰ To improve performance of SCT/FDE, Falconer et al.

proposed a hybrid equalizer in which the feedforward part
is in the frequency domain and the feedback part is in the
time domain (IEEE Comm. Magazine, April 2002).
‰ With ideal decision feedback, this structure was shown to
yield better performance than OFDM on the SUI-5 channel.
‰ This paper also highlighted the potential of a dual-mode
system employing SCT/FDE on the uplink and OFDM on the
downlink. This solution solves the uplink PAPR problem
and also reduces the number of FFTs in the user terminal.
‰ Since SCT/FDE and OFDM use the same building blocks, a
software-defined radio modem can be configured to
implement both techniques.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 23

 Iterative MMSE DFE

‰ More recently, Benvenuto et al. proposed an iterative DFE

structure in which both the feedforward and the feedback
filters operate in the frequency domain.
‰ The first decisions are those of a linear MMSE equalizer.
The decision process is reiterated by feeding back the
decisions from the previous iteration.
‰ In contrast with conventional time-domain DFEs which
cancel causal interference only, iterative block DFEs cancel
both precursor and postcursor interference.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 24

 OFDMA

‰ In the IEEE 802.11a and HIPERLAN2 standards, OFDM is

used with TDMA. In this scheme, a TDMA time slot is an
integer multiple of an OFDM symbol.
‰ It is also possible to use orthogonal frequency-division
multiple access (OFDMA), where the N carriers are not all
assigned to the same user.
‰ In OFDMA, the set of N carriers is partitioned into M
subsets of N/M carriers, and resource assignment is
performed subset by subset.
‰ This means that resources can be allocated to M users
during the same OFDM symbol period.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 25

 OFDMA (cont’d)

‰ OFDMA has several interesting features w.r.t. OFDM/TDMA.

The first is that it reduces the granularity of the bursts
allocated to different users, and this increases the
efficiency of the MAC protocol.
‰ Another feature is that OFDMA can increase the cell range
in the upstream direction by concentrating the power
available from the CPE transmit amplifier on a subset of
carriers.
‰ The cell range can also be increased on the downlink by
allocating a transmit power to each set of carriers that is a
function of the distance to the user to which this set is
allocated.

H. Sari, Journée Scientifique ENSTA, 23 novembre 2005 26

 Summary and Conclusions

‰ We have described the technologies adopted by the IEEE

802.16 for BWA and discussed their potentials.
‰ We have given a common framework to OFDM, Precoded
OFDM and SCT/FDE, and suggested that the real question
is not OFDM vs. SCT, but rather frequency-domain vs.
time-domain processing.
‰ We have summarized the latest developments in
frequency-domain equalization: From LE to DFE with time-
domain feedback, to DFE fully in the frequency-domain,
and finally to iterative frequency-domain DFE.
‰ It appears that the most appealing feature of OFDM is its
flexibility and that it opens the way to OFDMA, which leads
to cell range extension.

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