EFFECTIVE SNR ESTIMATION IN OFDM SYSTEM
SIMULATION
Shousheng He and Mats Torkelson
Department of Applied Electronics, Lund University
S-ZZlOOLund, Sweden
email: he@tde.lth.se:torkel@tde.lth.se
Abstmct- Signal-to-NoiseRatio (SNR), the stan-
dard measure of analog noise attribute, is used to as-
sess the quality of the final demodulation signals in a
OrthogonalFrequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)
system. The approach is based on the statistic proper-
ties of random process after Fourier transform, An
simple form of least-square SNR estimator in fre-
quency domain is presented, which drastically reduces
wmputational complexity since no timing alignment is
necessary. SNR estimationis used to evaluate not only
the adverse impairment of the interference in external
channel, but also the seventy of different distortions
caused by non-ideal operations of the internal compo-
nents. It is shown that with an effective SNR estima-
tion, quantified measurementcan be achieved in short
simulation time for such distortions as caused by non-
ideal channel estimation, signal dipping, camer fre-
quency offset, and many other soumes in the system.
This leads to more rational trade-offs in the hardware
design to optimize the performance of the system un-
der given implementation constraints.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the design of digital communication systems, simula-
tion is imperative for performance evaluation and design
space exploration, where many realistic limitation and
practical implementation restrictions must to he taken into
consideration. For a generic communication system, the
performance degradation is dominated by many interac-
tive factors, which falls in two categories: the interference
noises and distortions. The impairment to the received
signal can be caused by either the external environment,
the channel, or by the non-ideal hardware components,
such as filters and non-linear power amplifiers within the
system establishment.
Although it is generally accepted that the Bit-Error-
Rate (BER) is most informative performance measure-
ment for digital communication systems, it is very ex-
pensive, in terms of simulation time, to obtain an un-
biased and reliable estimation of BER for a complex
communication system, especially when the level of
noisdinterference and the distortion is relatively low.
This difficulty prevents an accurate assessment of indi-
0-7803-4984-9/98/$10.00 01998 IEEE.
vidual distortioddisturbance conhihutions from different
sources. The design trade-offs for signal quality and im-
plementation complexity are not on a solid numerical ba-
sis.
On the other hand, Signal-to-Noise Ratio, SNR, has
heen long used as the standard measure of quality of ana-
log signals in noisy environment. It has heen also pro-
posed that measurement of effective S N R to he used in
evaluating the quality of the received signals, which is
corrupted by both noise and distortion, in communication
systems [l]. There are, however, two difficulties in esti-
mation of the S N R in the simulation of general commn-
nication systems. First, it is very difficult to establish the
statistical property of SNR estimation, due to the nature
of impairment by various distortions, some of them seem
to be not random enough to justify a noise assumption.
Second, the estimator for general communication systems
is impractically complicated, and demands intensive com-
putation that decreases its feasibility in system simulation
which is already very time-consuming.
In this paper, we propose a simplified variation of the
estimator that is specially tailored to communication sys-
tem based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex-
ing (OFDM) principles. The estimator is greatly sim-
plified, and the contribution of distortions are better dis-
tributed when the transformed signal in frequency domain
comes to the demodulation. In next section we give a brief
description of a OFDM system. Then various distortions
in OFDM system are discussed, which illustrate approx-
imate Gaussian type distribution. A simplified S N R esti-
mator is presented in section 1V.Quantifiedassessment of
some distortions in OFDM system is used to demonstrate
the merits of this approach, which can lead to more ra-
tional trade-off when implementation complexity is taken
into consideration in OFDM system designs.
11. OFDM MODULATION
Mobile communication faces a particularly hostile envi-
ronment, simultaneously containing multi-path, interfer-
ence and impulsive parasitic noise. The problem is fur-
ther complicated by the scarcity of available spectrum re-
sources. Robust, bandwidth efficient systems with good
performance in such an environment are therefore desir-
able for data transmission
Figure 1: Principle of multi-carrier modulation
Multi-carrier Modulation (MCM) has long heen used
to overcome the adverse effects of communication chan-
nels [Z], with its basic principle shown in Fig. 1. Re-
cently proposed Orthogonal Frequency Division Multi-
plexing (OFDM), the most spectrum efficient MCM tech-
nique, is considered especially suitable for applications in
the mobile communication environment [3, 4, SI. In an
N-carrier OFDM modulation scheme, the set of carriers
f k is located at intervals of I/T,
k
fk = fc, + -,T 0 < A < iv (1)
where T is the time duration of the symbol. A set of elc-
mentaq functions is used as the carrier signals:
the spectra of each individual carriers are sinc functions
mutually overlapped, as shown in Fig. 2.
Figure 2: Carrier spectrum overlapping in OFDM system
Unlike traditional Frcqucncy Division Multiplexing
(FDM) schemes, there is no guard band between adjacent
carriers to isolate them at the receivers using conventional
filters. Instead, the frequency-division is achieved, not by
bandpass filtering, but by baseband processing utilizing
the orthogonal property of the base functions of the carr-
ers:
T. k=/
{
CL. ( 1jc; ( t ) r / t =
0, otherwise (3)
When a set of symbols .ii , ( I 5 I < A' from a finitc
complex alphabet is transmitted, the modulated temporal
signal can be written as
S-1 fi-- I
.(t) = C.i;;cr(t)
= Cspfxt, O<t<T
k=U k=ll
(4)
In a ideal, distortion and noise free channel, the received
signal is just a delayed and scaled replica of the transmit-
ted signal:
05 t <T
y(l) = yo@) = r z ( t - T ) , ~ 7 (5)
and the demodulation rule can be easily deduced as
Zk = + ,gY"(t)Cji(i,)df
- I/Cb~~~Cfr(l)e-j'"fXLd~,
05A <N
where the factor WO= [ T P - J ~ ~ ~is~ obtained
' )
estimation of the ideal distortion-less channel.
as the
The OFDM technique transforms a highly-selective
wide-band signal into a large number of non-selective
narrow-band signals which arc frequency multiplexed.
Channel estimation in OFDM system becomes simple,
since for each suh-carrier modulated by a narrow-band
signal, the sub-channel can be considered flat. Just one
complex operation will be able to correct both amplitude
and phase offset for each sub-channel. OFDM systems
have been proposed for audio signal transmission to mo-
bile receivers [6, 71, data intensive HDTV broadcasting
program [8] and cellular mobile communication [9]. Re-
cently, there has heen a growing interest in the application
of OFDM modulation technique in DS-CDMA (Direct-
Sequence Code-Division Multiple-Access) scheme to im-
prove the performance in frequency selective fading chan-
nels [lo, 11, 12, 13, 141.
111. DISTORTIONS
IN OFDM SYSTEM
In a communication link containing dclay spread, which
can be caused by either multi-path propagation of the
channel or the memory components in the system, such
as in filters, Inter-Symbol Interferences (ISI) occurs. In
OFDM system IS1 is much alleviated due to the long sym-
bol duration. In addition, a cyclic prefix, or a cyclic ex-
tension of the temporal signal, as shown in Fig. 3, is em-
ployed to further eliminate IS1 distortion. The duration
of cyclic prefix is chosen to be longer than the impulse
response of the channel, so that when it is cut off before
demodulation, the signal is free from IS1 distortion. For
thcse reasons, in the following discussion, IS1 free signal
is assumed to have been obtained in a OFDM rcceiver.
In a communication systcm built with realistic com-
plexity, many functors are not ideal which distort thc

AmI- : ,: , ., .
. virtual of the central limit theorem, the noise part in
m.m z%m 3o.m 15.m
Figure 3: Temporal aspecl of OFDM signal and cyclic
prefix
transmitted signal even without external noises. These
distortions can come from, for example, Hard (clipping)
and soft non-linearity of power amplifiers, synchroniza-
tion error, which causes both timing and frequency offset,
and quantization errors in digital processing of the sig-
nal. In most cases, analytical representation of these dis-
tortions are very difficult. Under the consumption that IS1
does not exist for an OFDM system, a distortion of the re-
ceived signal can be considered as undesired transform to
the ideal transmitted signal.
Y(t) = h [ z ( t )n@Il
, (7)
where n ( t )represents external interferences, such as due
to impulsive noise, co-channel interferences and thermal
noises in amplifiers.
To estimate the quality of the received signal, it is nat-
ural to decompose the corrupted signal into a “clean” sig-
nal, as through an ideal, distortion free channel and an
additive noise that disturhs the signal.
y ( t ) = yo@) + n ( t )= r z ( t ~ T )+ n ( t ) (8)
For a general communication system, the signal and noise
in eqn. (8) has been defined to be that for which the Mean-
Square (MS) difference
B’! =< [ y ( t ) - m ( t - r)]’ > (9)
is minimum for all 1’ and T [I], where <> denotes time-
average.
One of the main difficulties in the estimation of SNR in
simulations is to obtain the optimal delay r to minimize
eqn. (9). It requires compute a large set of empirical cross-
correlation functions [l]. Also, the statistical properties
of n ( t )is extremely difficult to obtain, since analytically
expression of h.(t) is usually not available. n ( t ]in general
will have very complicated non-central distribution.
For a system with OFDM modulation, the demodula-
tion is done in frequency domain. Applying the demod-
ulation rule expressed in eqn. (6), the temporal signal de-
composition in the form of eqn. (8) is then transformed
into
= +J: yo(t)c;(tjdt + + J,’n(t)c;(t)dt
(10)
Disregarding the form of distortionshferences, by the
eqn. (10) tends to approach a Gaussian process, and it
has been shown that if n(t) is a Wide-Sense Stationary
(WSS) process, the noise part in eqn. (10) tends to he
white 1151. For an OFDM system with large number of
sub-carriers, T is sufficiently long and the approximation
is very close to observations. The statistic property of the
Fourier-transformed signal not only simplify the estima-
tion process significantly,hut also justified the noise treat-
ment of many complex distortions in OFDM systems.
IV. AN SNR ESTIMATOR
IN OFDM SYSTEM
SIMULATION
For an OFDM system, the temporal comparison of cor-
rupted and ideal signals can he replaced by comparing the
modulation symbols, which is performed in frequency do-
main. The signal and noise are then defined to he that for
which the MS error
=< 12,- WS,12 >
€2 (1 1)
N-1
is minimum over all W ,where < . >= k represents
k=O
set average. W S , is used as the reference for observed
signal in each suh-channel. Instead of the timing align-
ment by searching for r in eqn. (9), a frequency alignment
of the k-th canier is required. This is extremely simple for
a working OFDM system, since a large frequency offset
is not likely due to the frequency synchronizationrequire-
ment of OFDM system itself.
With the same reasoning as i n [l], but keep in mind
that all ZA,SL.and W are complex, it can he shown that
eqn. (11) isminimized when
IWl’< /Sk/’ > -WR,Z- VL’*R3z (12)
is also minimized, where ()* denotes complex conjugate
operation and the empirical cross-correlation functions are
in the form of
R,3y= RsZ’ =< SkZz > 113)
A unique channel factor W can he thus obtained that
minimize eqn. (12)
The SNR, which specify the power ratio of received
“clean” signal and that of noise defined in eqn. (1 1) can
be then estimated as
 948

Making appropriate substitutions, after some manipula-

tion, the SNR estimation can be expressed in the a closed
form of

V. SNR ESTIMATION
AS QUANTIFIED
MEASUREMENT
The estimator described in the above section has been
(a). coherentSNR=13.9dB (b). differential SNR=10.8dB
integrated into a detailed simulation model of OFDM
system for hardwarc development, built upon the design
framework Ptolemy [16]. Fig. 4 shows the block diagram Figure 5 : Simulation result for cohercnt and differential
of the estimator calculating eqn. (16). The simpleness of detection in AWGN channel
the approach can be clearly seen.
SNReffc effective baseband SNR cal~ula10r
when the amplitude of input signal is too high. Effec-
tivc SNR measurement can be used to assess the dam-
ages caused by different clipping levels. Fig. 6 shows a
simulation result, which demonstrate that clipping is very
damaging to OFDM signals, a 3dB reduction of PAR is
counter-weighted by a 9dB SNR loss!

Figure 4: block diagram of the estimator in Ptolemy

With SNR estimation as a quantified measurement

of the signal quality at the demodulation stage of an
OFDM system, many interesting results have been ob-
tained through extensive simulations. Here we take some
examples to show the performance measurement with ef-
fective SNR. The lollowing simulations have been run
with the model configured as an OFDM system with 1024
sub-carriers and 128-point cyclic prefix (0.125 symbol
length) and QPSK constellation. Figure 6: Clipping reduces PAR, effective SNR degradcs

A. Coherent versus differential detection

In OFDM system, differential modulation can be done
along either time or frequency axes. Compared with co-
herent detection with perfect channel estimation, differen-
tial detection requires 3dB higher SNR due to noisy ref-
erences. Simulation result indicates that the estimate of
SNR in coherent detection is almost exactly 3dB higher
than differential detections in channels with Additive
Gaussian White Noise (AGWN), as shown in Fig. 5. This
result can be used as an empirical proof of the correctness
of the SNR estimator.
B. Clipping (hard non-linearity)
OFDM signal is known to have high Peak-to-Average Ra-
tio (PAR). PAR as high as 16dB can bc observed in sim-
ulations for 1K sub-carriers. Thc high PAR makes it very
difficult for efficicut power amplifier design. Clipping
(hard non-linearity) is a brute-force approach to reduce
PAR, which resemblc the saturation of power amplifiers
C. Carrierfrequency offset
OFDM system is known to be sensitive to carricr fre-
quency offset, which destroys the orthogonality of the
sub-carriers, causing sub-carrier offset and Inter-Canier
Interference (ICI) [17]. This is especially severe when the
carrier frequency is high. Two different impairment can
be observed for demodulation signals [IS]: 1. a com-
mon phase rotation due to sub-carrier offset and 2. a
Gaussian-like noise due to frequency leak from adjacent
sub-carriers. Thc common phase error can be corrected
by channel equalizer, while the degradation by the quasi
Gaussian noise need to be evaluated. In Fig. 7 a quantified
evaluation of this noise is made through effective SNR es-
timation, where A.fs is the carrier frequency offset and
fc the sub-carrier spacing. It is been illustrated that with
relative carrier frequency as small as = U. 15, the sys-
tem performance deteriorate so rapidly as to the verge of
collapsing due to the degradation of the effective SNR.

(a), = 0.05,SNR=20.9dB (b).
Figure 7: SNR degrade due to carrier frequency offset.
D. Window application
It has been suggested that applying window at receiver
can improve the reception of OFDM signals, for example
in [ 191. The small improvement will depend on the chan-
nel character and the length of uncorrupted prefix. This
dependency makes it very difficult to evaluate analytically
the gain due to window application, which, on the nega-
tive side, increased the implementation complexity. Using
S N R estimation, the gain in different situation can be ea.-
ily observed. Fig. 8 shows the improvement by applying a
Hanning window at receiver side, for a clipped signal and
a signal with carrier frequency offset respectively. Com-
paring signals received with a rectangular window, as il-
lustrated in Fig. 6 @ ) and Fig. 7@), the S N R increase by
about 0.9dB and 0.4dB respectively, as shown in Fig. 8.
A%>: D l l l U 6 .m*_U, F**s.%W &.LMCY &my:nllll'%d*:ll*LIM-
w ,I
,_ I 1 0
,I
111 I_ ,II 1_
(a). PAR=E.SZdB, SNR=14.2dB (b).
Figure 8: Applying Hanning window increase effective
SNR.
VI. CONCLUSION
Effective SNR estimation has been proposed in this pa-
per as a quantified measurement of many different im-
pairments to the demodulation signals in a OFDM sys-
tem. The theoretical support for this approach is that the
Fourier transform effectively whitens many distortions in
frequency domain, when their time domain counterparts
are not in a distribution to justify a white noise treatment.
A efficient baseband SNR estimator has been presented,
which does not need timing or frequency alignment. Sev-
eral examples have been used to demonstrate the quanti-
fied measurement for different distortions in simulations.
The SNR estimator presented here has been also used
in extensive OFDM system simulations to measure signal
impairments due to non-ideal operation of components,
such as I-Q miss-match in upldown converters, non-linear
power amplifiers, finite word-length effect etc. Quantified
evaluation to these distortions gives hardware designers
a solid numerical ground in exploring the design space
= 0.15,SNR=ll.ldB and more rational trade-offs in system performance and
implementation complexity or power consumption.
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