1 INTRODUCTION 1.

1 COFDM
Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) is a form of

modulation which is particularly well-suited to the needs of the terrestrial broadcasting channel. COFDM can cope with high levels of multipath propagation, with a wide spread of delays between the received signals. This leads to the concept of single-frequency networks in which many transmitters send the same signal on the same frequency, generating artificial multipath.COFDM also copes well with co-channel narrowband interference, as may be caused by the carriers of existing analogue services. COFDM has therefore been chosen for two recent new standards for broadcasting DAB and DVB-T, both of which have been optimized for their respective applications and have options to suit particular needs. The special performance of COFDM in respect of multipath and interference is only achieved by a careful choice of parameters and with attention to detail in the way in which the forward error-correction coding is applied.

1.2 FDM
Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is a scheme in which numerous signals are combined for transmission on a single communications line or channel. Each signal is assigned a different frequency (subchannel) within the main channel. A typical analog Internet connection via a twisted pair telephone line requires approximately three kilohertz (3 kHz) of bandwidth for accurate and reliable data transfer. Twisted-pair lines are common in households and small businesses. But major telephone cables, operating between large businesses, government agencies, and municipalities, are capable of much larger bandwidths. Suppose a long-distance cable is available with a bandwidth allotment of three megahertz (3 MHz). This is 3,000 kHz, so in theory, it is possible to place 1,000 signals, each 3 kHz wide, into the long-distance channel. The circuit that does this is known as a multiplexer. It accepts the input from each individual end user, and generates a signal on a different frequency for each of the inputs. This results in a high-bandwidth, complex signal containing data from all the end users. At the other end of the long-distance cable, the individual signals are separated out
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by means of a circuit called a demultiplexer, and routed to the proper end users. A two-way communications circuit requires a multiplexer/demultiplexer at each end of the long-distance, high-bandwidth cable.When FDM is used in a communications network, each input signal is sent and received at maximum speed at all times. This is its chief asset. However, if many signals must be sent along a single long-distance line, the necessary bandwidth is large, and careful engineering is required to ensure that the system will perform properly.

1.3 What is modulation?

Modulation is a process by which a carrier signal is altered according to information in a message signal. The carrier frequency, denoted Fc, is the frequency of the carrier signal. The sampling rate, Fs, is the rate at which the message signal is sampled during the simulation. The frequency of the carrier signal is usually much greater than the highest frequency of the input message signal. The Nyquist sampling theorem requires that the simulation sampling rate Fs be greater than two times the sum of the carrier frequency and the highest frequency of the modulated signal, in order for the demodulator to recover the message correctly. The three key parameters of a periodic waveform are its amplitude ("volume"), its phase ("timing") and its frequency("pitch"). Any of these properties can be modified in accordance with a low frequency signal to obtain the modulated signal. Typically a high-frequency sinusoid waveform is used as carrier signal, but a square wave pulse train may also be used.

1.4 ORTHOGONALITY
The Orthogonal part of the COFDM name indicates that there is a precise mathematical relationship between the frequencies of the carriers in the system. In a normal FDM system, the many carriers are spaced apart in such a way that the signals can be received by using conventional filters and demodulators. In such receivers guard bands have to be introduced between different carriers and these guard bands in frequency domain results in a lowering of the spectrum efficiency. It is possible, however, to arrange the carriers in a COFDM signal so that the sidebands `of the individual carriers overlap and the signals can still be received without adjacent carrier interference . In order to do this, the carriers must be mathematically orthogonal.

1.5 Overview Of OFDM

OFDM is a special case of multi-carrier modulation where multiple low data rate carriers are combined by a transmitter to form a composite high data rate transmission and may be viewed as multiplexing technique. Fundamental concept of OFDM is the orthogonality of subcarriers in the frequency domain which is defined by

(1)

where f1(t) and f2(t) are the subcarrier frequencies and said to be orthogonal over the period T. While conventional FDM uses the frequency spacing of 2/T between neighboring subcarriers, OFDM uses the frequency spacing of 1/T, which is the minimum frequency spacing for orthogonality, between neighboring subcarriers by allowing the subcarrier spectra to overlap so that OFDM improves the spectral efficiency. Figure 1 shows the comparison of subcarrier spacing between the conventional FDM and OFDM.

Figure 1: Comparison of frequency spacing between conventional FDM and OFDM

1.6.1 THE SINGLE CARRIER MODULATION SYSTEM

Fig.3.1 Single carrier spectrum A typical single-carrier modulation spectrum is shown in Figure 3.1. A single carrier system modulates information onto one carrier using frequency, phase, or amplitude adjustment of the carrier. For digital signals, the information is in the form of bits, or collections of bits called symbols, that are modulated onto the carrier. As higher bandwidths (data rates) are used, the duration of one bit or symbol of information becomes smaller. The system becomes more susceptible to loss of information from impulse noise, signal reflections and other impairments. These impairments can impede the ability to recover the information sent. In addition, as the bandwidth used by a single carrier system increases, the susceptibility to interference from other continuous signal sources becomes greater. This type of interference is commonly labeled as carrier wave (CW) or frequency interference.

1.6.2 FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING MODULATION SYSTEM

A typical Frequency division multiplexing signal spectrum is shown in figure 3.2.FDM extends the concept of single carrier modulation by using multiple sub carriers within the same single channel. The total data rate to be sent in the channel is divided between the various sub carriers. The data do not have to be divided evenly nor do they have to originate from the same information source. Advantages include using separate modulation demodulation customized to a particular type of data, or sending out banks of dissimilar data that can be best sent using multiple, and possibly different, modulation schemes.

Fig 3.2 FDM signal spectrum Current national television systems committee (NTSC) television and FM stereo multiplex are good examples of FDM. FDM offers an advantage over single-carrier modulation in terms of narrowband frequency interference since this interference will only affect one of the frequency sub bands. The other sub carriers will not be affected by the interference. Since each sub carrier has a lower information rate, the data symbol periods in a digital system will be longer, adding some additional immunity to impulse noise and reflections. FDM systems usually require a guard band between modulated sub carriers to prevent the spectrum of one sub carrier from interfering
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with another. These guard bands lower the systems effective information rate when compared to a single carrier system with similar modulation.

1.6.3 ORTHOGONALITY AND OFDM

If the FDM system above had been able to use a set of sub carriers that were orthogonal to each other, a higher level of spectral efficiency could have been achieved. The guard bands that were necessary to allow individual demodulation of sub carriers in an FDM system would no longer be necessary. The use of orthogonal sub carriers would allow the sub carriers spectra to overlap, thus increasing the spectral efficiency. As long as orthogonality is maintained, it is still possible to recover the individual sub carriers signals despite their overlapping spectrums. If the dot product of two deterministic signals is equal to zero, these signals are said to be orthogonal to each other. Orthogonality can also be viewed from the standpoint of stochastic processes. If two random processes are uncorrelated, then they are orthogonal. Given the random nature of signals in a communications system, this probabilistic view of orthogonality provides an intuitive understanding of the implications of orthogonality in OFDM. OFDM is implemented in practice using the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Recall from signals and systems theory that the sinusoids of the DFT form an orthogonal basis set, and a signal in the vector space of the DFT can be represented as a linear combination of the orthogonal sinusoids. One view of the DFT is that the transform essentially correlates its input signal with each of the sinusoidal basis functions. If the input signal has some energy at a certain frequency, there will be a peak in the correlation of the input signal and the basis sinusoid that is at that corresponding frequency. This transform is used at the OFDM transmitter to map an input signal onto a set of orthogonal sub carriers, i.e., the orthogonal basis functions of the DFT. Similarly, the transform is used again at the OFDM receiver to process the received sub carriers.
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The signals from the sub carriers are then combined to form an estimate of the source signal from the transmitter. The orthogonal and uncorrelated nature of the sub carriers is exploited in OFDM with powerful results. Since the basis functions of the DFT are uncorrelated, the correlation performed in the DFT for a given sub carrier only sees energy for that corresponding sub carrier. The energy from other sub carriers does not contribute because it is uncorrelated. This separation of signal energy is the reason that the OFDM sub carriers spectrums can overlap without causing interference.

1.6.4 MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS:

With an overview of the OFDM system, it is valuable to discuss the mathematical definition of the modulation system. It is important to understand that the carriers generated by the IFFT chip are mutually orthogonal. This is true from the very basic definition of an IFFT signal. This will allow understanding how the signal is generated and how receiver must operate. Mathematically, each carrier can be described as a complex wave:

The real signal is the real part of Sc(t). Ac (t) and c (t), the amplitude and phase of the carrier, can vary on a symbol by symbol basis. The values of the parameters are constant over the symbol duration period t. OFDM consists of many carriers. Thus the complex signal Ss(t) is represented by:

This is of course a continuous signal. If we consider the waveforms of each component of the signal over one symbol period, then the variables Ac (t) and c (t) take on fixed values, which depend on the frequency of that particular carrier, and so can be rewritten:

If the signal is sampled using a sampling frequency of 1/T, then the resulting signal is represented by:

At this point, we have restricted the time over which we analyze the signal to N samples. It is convenient to sample over the period of one data symbol. Thus we have a relationship: t=NT If we now simplify equation 3.3, without a loss of generality by letting 0=0, then the signal becomes:

In Equation the function is no more than a definition of the signal in the sampled frequency domain, and s (kT) is the time domain representation. Eqns.4 and 5 are equivalent if:

This is condition required for orthogonality Thus,one consequence of maintaining orthogonality is that the OFDM signal can be defined by using Fourier transform procedures.

1.7 COFDM OVERVIEW

COFDM is a form of modulation which is particularly well-suited to the needs of terrestrial broadcasting channel. COFDM can cope with high levels of multi-path propagation,with a wide spread of delays between the received signals. It also cope with co-channel narrowband interference. COFDM has therefore been chosen for two recent new standards for broadcasting-DAB and DVB-T, both of which have been optimized for their respective applications and have options to suit particular needs. The special performance of COFDM in respect of multi-path and interference is only achieved by a careful choice of parameters and with attention to detail in the way in which the forward error-correction coding is applied. COFDM involves modulating the data onto a large number of carriers using the FDM technique. While OFDM systems convert a multipath fading channel into a series of equivalent single path parallel channels, they lack the inherent diversity available in multipath channels.Different coded OFDM systems have been reported that employ some form of channel coding or precoding to improve systems performance. The error analysis of communication systems over fading channels shows that it is the Hamming distance that governs the performance over fading channels . It is important to mention that the Hamming distance of a signal constellation can be increased by non-redundant or redundant coding

2 LITERATURE SURVEY 2.1 HISTORY

The history of OFDM goes back to the 1960s.At the time,there was a need to make more efficient use of bandwidth transmissions without creating situations where signals would be subject to a phenomenon referred to as crosstalk.Essentially,crosstalk occurs when two audio sources are broadcasting at same time.The end result is that message of each broadcast is partially obscured for anyone attempting to listen to either of the messages.Crosstalk can be compared to two people choosing to speak while another individual is already speaking.

2.2 OVERVIEW OF VARIOUS GENERATIONS

First generation (1G) wireless telecommunication the brick-like analog phones thate are now collector being offered by most wireless companies today.Second generation (2G) wireless supported more users within a cell by usingdigital technology,But 2G was still primarily meant for voice communication,not data,except some very low data-rate features,like short messaging service(SMS).2.5G allowed carriers to increase data rates with software upgrade at the base transceivers stations(BTS),as long as consumers purchased new phones too.Third generation (3G) wireless offers the promise of greater bandwidth,which will allow them to send and receive information.We are seeing massive demand for data,audio,image and video service on mobile phones.In such a scenario,the present 2G and 3G system will saturateand have no room to survive.Also demand for increase in data rate lead to higher bandwidth requirements.These factors force cellular industry to develop a common standard or system that overcomes almost all limitations proposed by previous cellular technologies.What will be its solution?? 4G:The ultimate mobile solution are except to allow much higher data rates of around 100 Mbps,higher bandwidth of the order of hundreds of megahertz,plenty of service like data,audio,video,seamless connectivity and improved quality of service keeping in mind that all existing networks can be merged or interconnected to form all-in-one.4G could usher in the next big revolution in communication.But it is extremely important not to be carried away with technological development alone.

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2.3 TDMA
Time Division Multiple Access,a technology for delivering digital wireless service using Time division Multiplexing(TDM).TDMA works by dividing a radio frequency into time slots and then allocating slots to multiple calls.In this way,a single frequency can support multiple,simultaneous data channels.TDMA is used by the GSM digital cellular system.There are lots of advantages of TDMA in cellular technologies.It can easily adapt to transmission of data as well as voice communication.It has an ability to carry 64kbps to 120 Mbps of data rates.This allows the operator to do services like fax,voice band data,and SMS as well as bandwidthintensive application such as multimedia and videoconferencing.One major disadvantage using TDMA technology is that users has a predefined time slot.When moving from one cell site to other,if all the time slots in this cell are full the user might be disconnected.Likewise,if all the time slots in the cell in which the user is currently in are already occupied,the user will not receive a dial tone.Another problem in TDMA is that it is subjected to multipath distortion.

2.4 CDMA
It is used in rural areas where GSM cannot cover.Another advantage is its capacity ; it has very high spectral capacity that it can accommodate more users per Mhz of bandwidth.It uses vocoder EVRC for noise reduction where the background noise is reduced.This is exclusively available in CDMA.One major problem in CDMA technology is channel pollution,where signals from too many cell sites are present in subscribers phone but none of them is dominant.When this situation arises the quality of the audio degrades.Another disadvantage in this technology when compared to GSM is lack of international roaming capabilities.

2.5 FDMA
Frequency Division Multiple Access,allows users to access a single channel,through a shared frequency;this system is advantageous as it is run through a satellite and offers users the chance to share a channel easily without time delays.The disadvantage of FDMA is expense of running the system,which requires costly,custom filters and technical equiptment.4G is short name for fourth-generation wireless,the stage of broadband mobile communication that will supercede the third generation(3G).
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2.6 OFDM
Carriers that use orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing(OFDM) instead of Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) are increasingly marketing their services as being 4G,even when their data speeds are not fast as International Telecommunication Union(ITU) specifies.According to ITU,a 4G network requires a mobile device to be able to exchange data at 100Mbit/sec.A 3G network,on the other hand can offer data speeds as slow as 3.84Mbit/sec.

2.7 TYPES OF OFDM

y y y y y C-OFDM MIMO-OFDM V-OFDM W-OFDM FLASH-OFDM

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3.NEED FOR COFDM

3.1 MULTIPATH FADING

When radio signal travel from point to point they may bounce off surrounding objects, resulting in multiple paths between transmitter and receiver. This leads to several copies of the message arriving at the receiver.This is called multipath fading. The combination of all paths at the receiver causes the modulated message to be distorted. Thus the individual pulses overlap one another, and this is called intersymbol interference. Each subcarrier in an OFDM signal has a very narrow bandwidth, thus the symbol rate is very low. This results in the signal having high tolerance to multi path delay spread,reducing any significant intersymbol interference.

3.2 RF INTERFERENCE

To combat the effects of random signal noise, which can prevent the receiver from fully recovering the signal, a spreading forward error correcting code is applied to the signal before transmission this has the effect of spreading the symbols over many frequencies, while maintaining the ability to recover thesymbols even if some carriers are subjected to noise.

3.3 PATH LOSS

The strength of the received signal decreases in a wireless channel environment as the distance between a transmitter and receiver increases. In the case of free space, the received power can be determined as

where Pr is the received power, Pt is the transmitted power, d is the distance between the transmitter and the receiver and k is a constant. However, in general the path loss is dependent on many factors. In many practical

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system designs, it is common to use the simple propagation loss model

where K is a constant which depends on the antenna characteristic and blockage losses, d0 is a reference distance and is a path loss exponent. Usually, the pass loss exponent is a number between 2 and 5. In the case of free space, the path loss exponent is 2.

3.4 SHADOWING

The path loss model give by Equation (2.2) does not consider the fact that the average received power level can be very different at the same distance between the transmitter and the receiver depending on the obstacles in different environments. Measurements have shown that the average path loss at the same distance d is dependent on locations and follows a log-normal distribution as.

where

is the average value of 10 log10

in dB and

is the standard deviation of

10 log10 . For usual environments, the value of

is between four and twelve dB.

Combining Equation (2.2) and (2.3), we can obtain the large-scale propagation loss PL

3.5 GUARD PERIOD

For a given system bandwidth the symbol rate for an OFDM signal is much lower than a single carrier transmission scheme. For example for a single carrier BPSK modulation, the symbol rate corresponds to the bit rate of the transmission. However for OFDM the system bandwidth is broken up into NC sub carriers, resulting in a symbol rate that is NC times lower than the single carrier transmission. This low symbol rate makes OFDM naturally resistant to effects of InterSymbol Interference (ISI) caused by multipath propagation. Multipath propagation is caused by the radio transmission signal reflecting off objects in the propagation
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environment, such as walls, buildings, mountains, etc.

These multiple signals arrive at the receiver at different times due to the transmission distances being different. This spreads the symbol boundaries causing energy leakage between them. The effect of ISI on an OFDM signal can be further improved by the addition of a guard period to the start of each symbol. This guard period is a cyclic copy that extends the length of the symbol waveform. Each sub carrier, in the data section of the symbol, (i.e. the OFDM symbol with no guard period added, which is equal to the length of the IFFT size used to generate the signal) has an integer number of cycles. Because of this, placing copies of the symbol end-to-end results in a continuous signal, with no discontinuities at the joins. Thus by copying the end of a symbol and appending this to the start results in a longer symbol time. The total length of the symbol is TS=TG + TFFT, where Ts is the total length of the symbol in samples, TG is the length of the guard period in samples, and TFFT is the size of the IFFT used to generate the OFDM signal. In addition to protecting the OFDM from ISI, the guard period also provides protection against time-offset errors in the receiver. The effects of multipath propagation and how cyclic prefix reduces the inter symbol interference

3.6INTERSYMBOL INTERFERENCE

Assume that the time span of the channel is Lc samples long. Instead of a single carrier with a data rate of R symbols/ second, an OFDM system has N subcarriers, each with a data rate of R/N symbols/second. Because the data rate is reduced by a factor of N, the OFDM symbol period is increased by a factor of N. By choosing an

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Example of intersymbol interference. The green symbol was transmitted first,followed by the blue symbol. Appropriate value for N, the length of the OFDM symbol becomes longer than the time span of the channel. Because of this configuration, the effect of intersymbol interference is the distortion of the first Lc samples of the received OFDM symbol. An example of this effect is shown in Fig 3.11. By noting that only the first few samples of the symbol are distorted, one can consider the use of a guard interval to remove the effect of intersymbol interference. The guard interval could be a section of all zero samples transmitted in front of each OFDM symbol [20]. Since it does not contain any useful information, the guard interval would be discarded at the receiver. If the length of the guard interval is properly chosen such that it is longer than the time span of the channel, the OFDM symbol itself will not be distorted. Thus, by discarding the guard interval,the effects of intersymbol interference are thrown away as well.

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4. CODED ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING

The modulation scheme that DAB uses is Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM). COFDM uses a very different method of transmission to older digital radio modulation schemes and has been specifically designed to combat the effects of multipath interference for mobile receivers.

4.1 MULTIPATH

is the term for the different paths that a signal takes in reaching an aerial from the transmitter. For example, one path may be a line-of-sight path from the transmitter to the aerial whereas another path may bounce off a hill or building before reaching the aerial. In this example, the signal that travels along the line-of-sight path arrives at the aerial first followed a short period later by the path that has bounced off the hill or building. As the different paths travelled are of different length the time taken for the signal to reach the receiver will be different, with the direct path (if there is one) reaching the receiver first, followed by reflected paths. The effect that these multipaths have on the received signal at the antenna is that the amplitude of the received signal fluctuates. The reason for this fluctuation is due to the relative phase angle between the different paths. The received signal is very-high frequency sinusoidal carrier signal with comparatively a very slowly changing information signal that has been modulated onto the carrier. Therefore, a good way to model a carrier signal is to
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ignore the low frequency modulating signal and just assume that the multipaths are each high frequency sinusoids with different amplitudes due to the different distances covered (the amplitude reduces the further it travels) and relative phase angle due to the different delay. To find out the instantaneous amplitude that is received at the antenna a vector diagram can be drawn on which each multipath is represented by its amplitude (the length of the vector) and its phase angle relative to, say, the phase angle of the direct path (which gives the vector's direction). An example of a vector diagram is given below (ignore the N and E)

Ignoring the labels on the above diagram, the diagram could represent a two-path signal where the direct path is the pink vector and the sky blue vector is the delayed path, and the vector addition produces the red vector, and it is the resultant red vector that the receiver actually "sees". As a mobile receiver moves relative to the transmitter the distances travelled by the paths also changes and because the wavelength of a radio signal is of the order of 3 metres for VHF FM signals and about 1.5 metres for DAB signals in Band III the relative phase angles between the paths changes rapidly and randomly. For example, if there were two multipaths that are in-phase (zero relative phase difference) then one of the paths only has to travel half a wavelength further than the other (about 75 cm for Band III DAB signals) for the relative phase of the path to change by 1800. If you look at the vector diagram above, if the blue vector had a relative phase of 1800 and a length equal to the pink vector then it would be facing in the opposite direction to the pink vector so the pink and sky blue vectors would completely cancel one another and the length of the resultant red vector would be zero. As I explained above, the antenna "sees" the red vector, so the amplitude that the antenna sees is also zero. The term for this in physics is "destructive interference" and the signal is said to be in a "deep fade".
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Deep fades occur more frequently the faster the mobile is travelling, but the duration that the signal is in a deep fades decreases as the speed of the mobile increases. A typical graph of the amplitude of the carrier signal that the mobile antenna sees as it travels is shown below:

In fact, we would expect to useforward error-correction coding in almost any practical digital communication system, in order to be able to deliver an acceptable BER at a reasonably low SNR. At a high SNR it might not be necessary-and this is also true for uncoded OFDM, but only when the channel is relatively flat. Uncoded OFDM does not perform well in a selective channel. Again, for any reasonable number of carriers, CW interference that is affecting one carrier is less of a problem than a 0dB echo.However, just adding hard-decision-based coding to this Uncoded system is not enough,either-it would take a remarkably powerful hard-decision code to cope with an SER of 1 in 4! By using an error-correcting code which adds extra bits at the Transmitter it is possible to correct many or all of the bits received incorrectly.

4.2 WIDEBAND & NARROWBAND WIRELESS TRANSMISSION

The effect of multipath fading in the frequency domain is that wideband signals suffer from "frequency selective fading", which means that different parts of the spectrum are faded more than others. Narrowband signals on the other hand suffer from "flat fading" where the whole signal spectrum fades, so for example, a narrowband signal's spectrum would be multiplied by

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the above graph, which would mean that for example after travelling about 2.7 metres, destructive interference occurs and the whole spectrum will fade, hence the term 'flat fading'. Whether a wireless digital communication system is wideband or narrowband depends on the duration of the transmitted symbols over the mobile channel. The mobile channel can be represented by what is called a power delay profile, which shows the received power after the transmission of a very short pulse, called an impulse, and the power of the signal received varies with time due to the different multipaths that arrive at the receiver. The duration from the first received path to the last received path that has significant power gives the maximum delay of the channel. A typical power delay profile varies between approximately 4 s for urban environments up to about 20 s for a rural environment. A wireless digital communication system transmits "symbols" through the channel, for example, for a single-carrier binary phase shift keying (BPSK, which uses either 00 phase angle or 1800 phase angles, and a carrier phase of 00 represents a bit value of 0, and a carrier phase of 1800 represents a bit value of 1, so each transmitted "symbol" represents one bit of data) modulation scheme then the symbol duration is the duration between when the phase angles can change. And a wireless digital communication system uses narrowband transmission if the channel symbol duration is greater than the maximum delay of the mobile channel (e.g. 4 s for urban and about 20 s for a rural environment) and the system is wideband otherwise. In a digital wireless communication system, the bit errors are far more likely to occur when the signal is in a deep fade. Therefore these systems must mitigate the negative effects that multipath causes and different systems go about it in different ways. The two best known modern wireless digital communication transmission schemes are CDMA and OFDM. CDMA is used on the new 3G mobile phone system and is a wideband transmission scheme, which means that the channel symbols (which are called chips for CDMA) are far shorter than the maximum delay of the mobile channel. OFDM, as used on DAB and Freeview actually uses narrowband channels (subcarriers), but there are many of these narrowband channels transmitted in parallel, so the overall spectrum is wide (but this doesn't mean that it uses wideband transmission principles).

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4.3ERROR CORRECTION CODING

The result of OFDM using a large number of narrowband subcarriers is that each subcarrier suffers from flat fading, as described above. Because the subcarriers are subject to flat fading, DAB uses COFDM (coded OFDM) which means that the data transmitted on the subcarriers is protected by forward error correction (FEC) coding. The type of error correction coding that is used in COFDM is convolutional coding and the effect of convolutional coding is that for every one bit input to the error correction encoder, more than one bit is output depending on the "code rate" being used. For example, a code rate of 1/3 would mean that for every bit input to the error correction encoder, 3 bits will be output and these 3 bits are transmitted. Error correction coding therefore adds redundancy to the signal in order for the receiver to be able to correct any bits that are received in error. The error correction decoder used in COFDM is the Viterbi algorithm which tries to decode what bits were sent depending on the received sampled values. COFDM also allows different groups of bits to be protected with a different strength code rate because some bits are more important for the correct reproduction of the audio than some of the other bits. For example, important parameters in the MPEG audio stream are the filter parameters, so these are coded with a lower code rate (a lower code rate provides higher protection as more redundancy is added) so that the Viterbi error correction decoder has a higher chance of correcting any errors.

4.4 CHANNEL CODING AND INTERLEAVING:

OFDM is invariably used in conjunction with channel coding (forward error correction) and almost always uses frequency and/or time interleaving. Frequency interleaving increases resistance to frequency-selective channel conditions whereas time interleaving is of little benefit in slowly fading channels. The reason why interleaving is used on OFDM is to attempt to spread the errors out in the bit-stream that is presented to the error correction decoder, because when such decoders are presented with a high concentration of errors the decoder is unable to correct all the bit errors,and a burst of uncorrected errors occurs. A common type of error correction coding used with COFDM based systems is Convolutional coding, which is often concatenated with Reed-Solomon coding. Convolutional coding is used as inner code and reedsolomon coding is used as outer code- usually with additional interleaving in between the two layers of coding.
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The reason why this combination of error correction coding is used is that the Viterbi decoder used for convolutional decoding produces short errors bursts when there is a high concentration of errors, and Reed-Solomon codes are inherently well-suited to correcting burst of errors.

4.5 SOFT DECISION DECODING AND CSI:

A hard-decision receiver would operate according to the rule that negative signals should be decoded as 0 and positive ones as 1, with 0V being the decision boundary. If the instantaneous amplitude of the noise were never exceed 1, then this simple receiver would make no mistakes. But noise may occasionally have a large amplitude, although with lower probability than for smaller values. Thus if say,+0.5V is received, it most probably means that a 1 was transmitted, but there is a smaller yet still finite probability that actually 0 was sent. This view of a degree of confidence is exploited in soft-decision Viterbi decoders. These maintain a history of many possible transmitted sequences, building up a view of their relative likelihoods and finally selecting the values 0 or 1 for each bit, according to which has the maximum likelihood. For convenience, a Viterbi decoder adds logarithmic likelihoods to accumulate the likelihood of each sequence. The appropriate log-likelihood measure or metric of the certainty of each decision is indeed simply proportional to the distance from the decision boundary. The slope of this linear relationship itself also depends directly on the SNR

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4.6 COFDM TRANSMITTER

After the bit-stream is re-ordered in the time interleaver block, 3072 bits (for Transmission Mode 1 which uses 1536 subcarriers) enter the OFDM modulator. The bit-stream is first split up into 1536 pairs of bits and each pair is mapped to one of four quaternary phase shift keying (QPSK) symbols. DAB uses differential QPSK, which means that the bits are mapped to phase changes rather than to an absolute transmitted phase. An example mapping might be as follows:
Data Bits 00 01 11 10 Phase Change (degrees) 0 90 180 270

The above mapping is called a Gray code mapping, because adjacent symbols (or in this case phase changes) only differ by the value of one bit, which lowers the probability of there being two bit errors for one symbol.

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After the 1536 pairs of bits have been mapped to one of the four phase changes these phase changes are applied to the 1536 subcarriers. The previously transmitted QPSK symbol on each subcarrier will be placed in memory in the transmitter, and the phase change will then rotate this symbol. For example, if the previous transmitted symbol on a subcarrier was the top, right-hand point (at 45o) in the figure below (called a signal constellation diagram) and the bits that are being mapped onto the subcarrier are '11' then the phase will rotate by 180o so that the bottom, left-hand point (at 225o) will be transmitted on that subcarrier.

The QPSK symbols shown in the signal constellation diagram above are represented numerically by their co-ordinates on the diagram. The 'Re' axis is the 'real' axis and the 'Im' axis is the socalled 'imaginary' axis, which are the terms for diagrams that display what are called 'complex numbers'. A complex number consists of the combination of a real plus an imaginary number: I+jQ where I is the real part of the complex number and Q is the imaginary part of the complex number, and the 'j' is always multiplied by the imaginary number. The actual meaning of 'j' is that it is equal to the square-root of -1, which doesn't actually exist, and that is why it is called an
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imaginary number, but complex numbers are a very useful mathematical concept and the fact that the imaginary number doesn't actually exist doesn't matter. The transmitted symbols have the following (normalized) co-ordinates:

Rectangular ordinate 0.707 + j0.707 -0.707 + j0.707 -0.707 - j0.707 0.707 - j0.707

Co-

Carrier Phase 45o 135o 225o 315o

Complex numbers are used to represent signal points on a constellation diagram because the real and imaginary axes are at 900 apart and a sinewave and a cosine wave (both with the same frequency) are also 900 out of phase. This allows real number co-ordinates represent the amplitude of a cosine wave, and an imaginary number represent the amplitude of the sinewave, then adding the amplitude modulated sinewave and cosine wave together forms a 'quadrature' signal. For example, COFDM is also used as the transmission scheme for DVB-T (Freeview) which has the option of QPSK, 16-QAM and 64-QAM signal constellations to modulate the subcarriers. QAM stands for quadrature amplitude modulation and to generate one of the signal points on the constellation you amplitude modulate the cosine wave and the sinewave with the co-ordinates of the point on the signal constellation and then add the cosine wave and the sinewave together and the resultant signal is an amplitude and phase modulated signal, which is beneficial because you don't have to phase and amplitude modulate:

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4.7 OFDM MODULATOR

After the symbol mapping is carried out, as explained above, the frequency interleaving will reorder the symbols (not shown in diagram) and then the 1536 complex numbers that represent the symbols to be transmitted on each of the subcarriers will be sent to a serial-to-parallel converter and "placed" on each of the subcarriers. As all of this is done in the digital domain then the above diagram just serves as a way to visualise what happens. In reality the 1536 complex numbers will be stored in two buffers, with one buffer containing the real values of the complex number, and the other buffer containing the imaginary values of the complex numbers. The OFDM modulator consists of the block in the diagram that is labelled 'IDFT', which stands for inverse discrete Fourier transform. Again, in reality, the actual process carried out is the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT), because the IFFT is, as the name suggest, a fast way to calculate the IDFT. The IDFT calculates the following equation:

x(n) is the nth output signal complex value (time domain), X(k) is the complex symbol value on the kth subcarrier (frequency domain), and (for DAB transmission mode TM1) N = 2048 is the number of output signal points calculated, and also the number of input frequency points. The equation is a summation from 0 to N-1 for each output value x(n), X(k).e j.2.k.pi.n / N is summed from k=0 to k=N-1. For example, for x(2) the sum would be:
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x(2) = X(0) e j.0.2.pi.2 / N + X(1) e j.1.2.pi.2 / N + X(2) e j.2.2.pi.2 / N + X(3) e j.3.2.pi.2 / N + X(4) e j.4.2.pi.2 /
N

+ ..........

To understand what the IDFT does, you first need to understand what the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) does for which the IDFT is the inverse. The DFT calculates the discrete frequency spectrum from a block of discrete time samples of the signal (by 'discrete' I mean that a discrete signal or discrete spectrum is only defined at discrete moments of time, e.g. at the sampling instant for a time signal, or at a given frequency for a frequency spectrum). Therefore, the inverse DFT calculates the discrete time samples from a discrete frequency spectrum. This means that the frequency spectrum of the transmitted signal is given by the values of the complex data symbols on the subcarriers. There are a lot of redundant operations in the DFT, and for an N-point DFT this requires N2 complex multiplications, which for example for a 2048 point DFT as would be used for transmission mode 1 this would require 4,194,304 multiplications. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) is, as its name suggest, a fast way to calculate the DFT as many of the redundant operations are discarded, and this allows the FFT to be calculated in (N/2) log2N multiplications, which for a 2048 point FFT requires only 11,264 multiplications, which is a massive saving compared to the DFT. One of the properties of the DFT is what makes it suitable for OFDM, and really what makes OFDM feasible for practicaly implementation in the first place. This property is that the discrete frequency spectrum that is calculated by a DFT from a block of data samples has frequency samples that are all equally spaced in frequency, and this spacing equals 1/T, where T is the total duration of the time samples in the block. For example, for DAB transmission mode 1 (TM1), the "useful" duration of OFDM symbols (not data symbols on the subcarriers, OFDM symbols carry the data symbols on the subcarriers) is 1 ms (i.e. T = 1 ms), so 1/T = 1 kHz, and all the subcarriers are spaced by 1kHz. It is these equally spaced subcarriers that equal the useful symbol duration that gives OFDM its "orthogonal" property in its name orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. The property of orthogonality for communication signals means that signals that are orthogonal to each other can be transmitted together and they don't interfere with each other. So having the subcarriers all orthogonal to one another (each subcarrier is orthogonal to all the other 1535

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subcarriers) means that you can transmit the subcarriers in parallel and they won't interfere with each other. This means that the individual spectra for each of the subcarriers can overlap, and they still won't interfere with one another. A diagram that shows what the frequency spectra of subcarriers looks like for DAB is shown below, and the number of subcarriers for TM1 will be 1536:

As you can see from the figure above, for the frequency in red, all the 4 neighbouring spectra are zero where the red spectra is at its peak, and so there is no "intercarrier interference"; this is due to the orthogonality principle. The reason why the DFT makes OFDM practically feasible is that if you want to transmit 1536 subcarriers that are all orthogonal to each other then you would need 1536 oscillators which are all separated by 1kHz and 1536 filters at the transmitter, and 1536 filters and oscillators in each receiver, which is obviously not practical. After the IFFT has been calculated, the 1536 output complex numbers are parallel to serial converted (the P/S block in the diagram above), and following this the cyclic prefix (or guard period) is inserted (see diagram at the start of the COFDM transmitter).

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4.8COFDM RECEIVER

After the signals are received at the antenna, the signals are I/Q downconverted from RF to generate the real (I) and imaginary (Q) streams, lowpass filtered (LPF) and digitized in the analogue to digital converters (ADC, one ADC for each stream). Following the ADC, the cyclic prefix is stripped off and the remaining sampled values are serial to parallel converted and once there is a full block of samples (1536 for TM1) the DFT is calculated (in reality the FFT is calculated as the FFT requires far fewer multiplications to be carried out than the DFT). After the FFT (the FFT is the OFDM demodulator), the originally transmitted symbols will be received, but they will be corrupted in that the amplitude and phase will be altered by the channel response for each subcarrier, and noise will be added in the receiver which moves the received point in a random direction and with a random amplitude. As DAB uses differential modulation, only the difference in phase between the previous and present symbol on each subcarrier needs to be found to decode what was sent (ignoring errors). The phase angle of a complex number can be found from the following formula: theta = tan-1 (I / Q)

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To find the phase difference between the previous and present symbol the complex conjugate of the previous received point is multiplied by the present received point, then the angle of the result of this multiplication is the phase change. The complex conjugate of a complex number just changes the sign of the imaginary part, for example, if you have 1 + j2, then its complex conjugate is 1 - j2. Following the determination of the change of phase on each of the subcarriers, first the frequency interleaving is reversed and then the time interleaving is reversed, and the values are fed into the Viterbi error correction decoder. The output bitstream from the Viterbi decoder is then forwarded to software or hardware that goes about splitting the multiplexed data into its constituent streams followed by sending the audio data to the MPEG decoder to generate the PCM bitstream that is sent to the DACs, amplified and sent to the speakers.

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5 USES AND APPLICATIONS 5.1 APPLICATIONS

OFDM is used in many communications systems such as: ADSL, Wireless LAN, DAB, DVB, UWB and PLC y y y y Digital Audio and Video Broadcasting Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line(ADSL) Wireless Networking Wireless LAN

ADSL: OFDM is used in ADSL connections that follow the G.DMT (ITU G.922.1) standard. The fact that COFDM does not interfere easily with other signals is the main reason it is frequently used in applications such as ADSL modems in which existing copper wires are used to achieve high-speed data connections. The lack of interference means no wires need to be replaced. Wireless LAN: OFDM is also now being used in some wireless LAN applications, including WiMAX and IEEE 802.11a/g. IEEE 802.11a, operating in the 5 GHz band, specifies data rates ranging from 6 to 54 Mbit/s. Four different modulation schemes are used: BPSK, 4-QAM, 16-QAM, and 64-QAM. These modulation schemes are coupled with the various forward error correction convolutional encoding schemes to give a multitude of Number of data bits per symbol (Ndbps) performance. Digital radio and television( DAB-Digital Audio Broadcasting and DVB-Digital Video Broadcasting): One of the major benefits provided by COFDM is that it renders radio broadcasts relatively immune to multipath distortion, and signal fading due to atmospheric conditions, or passing aircraft. Flash-OFDM: Flash-OFDM is a system that is based on OFDM and specifies also higher protocol layers. It has been developed and is marketed by Flarion. Flash-OFDM has generated interest as a packet-switched cellular bearer, on which area it would compete with GSM(Global System for Mobile Telecommunication) and 3G networks. GSM uses Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), which has a high symbol rate leading to problems with multipath causing intersymbol interferen

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5.2 ADVANTAGES
y y y
y

y y y y y y y y
y

Can easily adapt to severe channel conditions without complex time-domain equalization. Robust against narrow-band co-channel interference. Robust against intersymbol interference (ISI) and fading caused by multipath propagation. High spectral efficiency as compared to conventional modulation schemes, spread spectrum, etc. No intercarrier guard bands Maximum spectral efficiency (Nyquist rate) Easy implementation by FFTs Multipath Delay Spread Tolerance. Effectiveness against Channel Distortion. Channel Amplitude and Phase is essentially constant, Channel Loading. Scale up Modulation and Coding over channels with deep fades. Frequency Diversity.

5.3 DISADVANTAGES
y y y y

Sensitive to Doppler shift. Sensitive to frequency synchronization problems. High peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR), requiring linear transmitter circuitry, which suffers from poor power efficiency. Loss of efficiency caused by cyclic prefix/guard interval

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6. CONCLUSIONS COFDM is a modulation scheme which is especially tailored to work well with selective channels and isolated CW (or analogue TV) interferers. The forward error-correction coding -the 'C' in COFDM -- is the key ingredient. However, the desired results are only achieved when the coding is closely integrated with the OFDM system. The 'COFDM magic' is achieved by the use of channel-state information (CSI). In the presence of CW interferers and/or a selective channel, some OFDM carriers will be worse affected than others. This state of affairs can be recognised by the receiver, which builds up channel-state information about the reliability of each carrier and uses this to supplement the soft decision information used by the Viterbi decoder. This achieves a substantial increase in performance compared with an uncoded OFDM system or one which makes no use of CSI. Coded systems with CSI can only be assessed in general by full software simulation or tests with real hardware. Nevertheless, a qualitative argument has been presented here for a testing (yet realistic) scenario -- a 0dB echo -- in order to explain how, by the use of CSI, COFDM copes well with it. Since the effect of a selective channel is shown to be similar to the effect of puncturing the errorcorrecting code, it follows that 'strong' (unpunctured) codes will give the best COFDM performance on selective channels. This may lead to the choice of different combinations of code-rate and modulation-constellation than would be made for the less-demanding flat channel.

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