Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM): Concept and System-Modeling
Klaus Witrisal
Signal Processing and Speech Communication Lab
Technical University Graz, Austria
VL: Mobile Radio Systems, Ch. 5: “Wideband Systems”
24-Nov-05
Outline
• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
What is OFDM?
• Modulation technique
– Requires channel coding
– Solves multipath problems
Transmitter:
I/Q RF
Source Channel OFDM I/Q-mod.,
Info coding coding / modulation up-
Source interleaving converter
e.g. Audio 0110 01101101 Radio-
Receiver: PSD channel
PSD
f f
Source Decoding / OFDM de- *
Down-
Info decoding deinter- modulation converter,
-fc fc
Sink leaving I/Q-demod.
I/Q RF
Multipath Propagation
• Reflections from walls, • Time dispersive channel
etc. – Impulse response:
p ( ) (PDP)
[ns]
• Problem with high rate data
transmission:
– inter-symbol-interference
Multipath Radio Channel
Inter-Symbol-Interference
Transmitted signal:
Received Signals:
Line-of-sight:
Reflected:
The symbols add up
on the channel Delays
Distortion!
Multipath Radio Channel
Outline
• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
Concept of parallel transmission (1)
Channel impulse
response Time
1 Channel (serial)
Channels are transmitted
2 Channels at different frequencies
(sub-carriers)
8 Channels
In practice: 50 … 8000
Channels (sub-carriers)
OFDM Technology
The Frequency-Selective Radio Channel
Power response [dB]
20
15
10
-5
-10
Frequency
• Interference of reflected (and LOS) radio waves
– Frequency-dependent fading
Multipath Radio Channel
Concept of parallel transmission (2)
Channel impulse Channel
response Time
Frequency
transfer function
1 Channel (serial) Signal is
Frequency
“broadband”
2 Channels Frequency
8 Channels
Frequency
Channels are
“narrowband”
OFDM Technology
Concept of an OFDM signal
Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10
Conventional multicarrier techniques frequency
Ch.2 Ch.4 Ch.6 Ch.8 Ch.10
Ch.1 Ch.3 Ch.5 Ch.7 Ch.9
Saving of bandwidth
50% bandwidth saving
Orthogonal multicarrier techniques frequency
Implementation and System Model
Outline
• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
Generating the OFDM signal (1)
• Symbol (QPSK) of sub-carrier i at time k
– Other symbol-alphabets can be used as well (BPSK, m-QAM)
• Baseband signal is generated by DSP
s BB ,i ,k (t ) w(t kT ) xi ,k exp j 2 if (t kT )
Window function Sub-carrier
xi,k Im
Re
Spectrum of the modulated data symbols
Magnitude
• Rectangular Window
of duration T0 T0
• Has a sinc-spectrum
with zeros at 1/ T0
• Other carriers are put
in these zeros
sub-carriers are
Frequency
orthogonal
N sub-carriers:
N 1
sBB ,k (t ) w(t kT ) i ,k
x
i 0
e j 2 if ( t kT )
resembles
IDFT!
Generating the OFDM signal (2)
x0,k s0,k
serial-to- x1,k IDFT s1,k parallel-
xn parallel to-serial sn
(IFFT)
xN,k sN,k
N data symbols: Base-band
(in frequency- signal
domain) xi,k Im (time-domain)
Re
Idea of Guard Interval (GI)
Insertion of guard interval (cyclic prefix): 1 OFDM symbol
FFT-part
Channel impulse response (shorter than GI): time
Cyclic convolution of transmitted signal
with channel impulse response
multiplication in frequency-domain
Introduction
Guard interval (2) - Cyclic extension
OFDM Symbol Configuration (1)
Transmitter pulse prototype w(t)
T
Twin Tguard TFFT
Prefix effective TX-time Postfix time
kT
Channel impulse response
excess delay time
max
Receiver filter (implemented by FFT)
TFFT time
System Proposal
OFDM System Model
• Multiplication of data symbols with (complex-valued)
channel transfer-function:
h-N/2,k n-N/2,k
x-N/2,k y-N/2,k
yi xi hi ni
hN/2-1,k nN/2-1,k
xN/2-1,k yN/2-1,k
Introduction
OFDM Block Diagram
Transmitter
I/Q I/Q
Channel Symbol OFDM Guard
coding / mapping modulation interval
interleaving (modulation) (IFFT)
OFDM spectrum for NFFT = 128, Nw in = 12, Nguard = 24, oversampling = 1
0110 010101001
power spectrum magnitude [dB]
10 N symbols
0
-10
1 OFDM symbol
-20
Receiver -30
-40 FFT-part
-50
Decoding / symbol de- -60 -40 OFDM -20 0 Guard
20 40 60
deinter- mapping demod. f [MHz] interval
time domain signal (baseband)
leaving (detection)
0.2 (FFT) removal
Channel 0.1 I/Q I/Q
impulse
Channel response:
est. Time sync. time
0
-0.1 imaginary
real
-0.2
Introduction
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
sample nr.
Outline
• Introduction
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM System Design
– Parameter selection
– Implementation Issues
• Summary and Applications
Design of an OFDM System
Data rate;
modulation
order
Channel Guard x(4 … 10) FFT
Nr. of
impulse interval symbol
carriers
response length length
Channel
Parameters
are needed Other constraints:
•Nr. of carriers should match FFT size
and data packet length
•considering coding and modulation schemes
Introduction
OFDM Symbol Configuration (1)
Transmitter pulse prototype w(t)
T
Twin Tguard TFFT
Prefix effective TX-time Postfix time
kT
Channel impulse response
excess delay time
max
Receiver filter (implemented by FFT)
TFFT time
OFDM System Design
Spectral Shaping by Windowing
OFDM System Design
OFDM Symbol Configuration (2)
• Not all FFT-points can be used for data carriers
– Lowpass filters for AD- and DA-conversion
• oversampling required
– DC offsets; carrier feedtrough; etc.
Transfer function of
transmitter/receiver
frequency
–fs/2 DC fs/2
useable sub-carriers useable sub-carriers
sub-carrier
–N/2, … …, –1, 0, 1, … …, N/2–1
index i
Design of an OFDM System
Outline
• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
Advantages of OFDM
• Solves the multipath-propagation problem
– Simple equalization at receiver
• Computationally efficient
– For broadband systems more efficient than SC
• Supports several multiple access schemes
– TDMA, FDMA, MC-CDMA, etc.
• Supports various modulation schemes
– Adaptability to SNR of sub-carriers is possible
• Elegant framework for MIMO-systems
– All interference among symbols is removed
Problems of OFDM (Research Topics)
time domain signal (baseband)
0.2
• Synchronization issues: 0.1
– Time synchronization 0
• Find start of symbols
-0.1 imaginary
– Frequency synchr. real
-0.2
• Find sub-carrier positions 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
sample nr.
• Non-constant power amplitude
envelope
– Linear amplifiers needed
• Channel estimation:
– To retrieve data
– Channel is time-variant
frequency
f frequency offset
OFDM Technology
Correlation-based Frequency-sync.
• Correlation of duplicated parts of OFDM signal
– e.g.: Cyclic prefix (Guard interval - GI):
Guard interval FFT-part
si: (M samples) (L samples)
... conj. … (M times)
conj.
M 1 ...
• Peak at optimum position
Popt i ri L
r *
• Phase frequency-offset
i 0
• Received signal with f-offset: ri si exp( j 2 f i / N )
– Constant phase offset between samples spaced by L
Introduction
Outline
• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
Applications of OFDM
• Wireless LAN
– IEEE802.11a/g
– HYPERLAN
• DAB, DVB, etc.
– Digital Audio/Video Broadcasting
• xDSL (Digital Subscriber Line)
– uses Discrete Multitone (DMT)
Summary and Applications
Summary – Essential “Ingredients”
• IFFT & FFT
– For efficient implementation
• Guard interval insertion
– Obtaining simple equalization
– Removing all IS- & IC-interferences
• Error correction coding
– To restore bits that are lost on weak sub-carriers
