MULTICARRIER MODULATION

Prof. Dr. Mahmood F. Mosleh

2022-2023
 Introduction
• The basic idea of multicarrier modulation is to divide the transmitted bitstream into many
different sub streams and send these over many different subchannels.
• The data rate on each of the subchannels is much less than the total data rate, and the
corresponding subchannel bandwidth is much less than the total system bandwidth.
• The number of substreams is chosen to ensure that each subchannel has a bandwidth less than
the coherence bandwidth of the channel, so the subchannels experience relatively flat fading.
• In this discrete implementation, called orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), the
ISI can be completely eliminated through the use of a cyclic prefix.
• The problems with multicarrier modulation that impair its performance, most significantly
frequency offset and timing jitter, which degrade the orthogonality of the subchannels, in
addition to peak-to-average power ratio.
 Data Transmission Using Multiple Carriers
• Consider a linearly modulated system with data rate R and bandwidth B. The coherence
bandwidth for the channel is assumed to be Bc < B, so the signal experiences frequency
selective fading.
• The basic premise of multicarrier modulation is to break this wideband system into N linearly
modulated subsystems in parallel, each with subchannel bandwidth BN = B/N and data rate
RN ≈ R/N. For N sufficiently large, the subchannel bandwidth BN = B/N << BC , which
ensures relatively flat fading on each subchannel.
• This can also be seen in the time domain: the symbol time TN of the modulated signal in each
subchannel is proportional to the subchannel bandwidth 1/BN . So BN << BC implies that TN ≈
1/BN >> 1/Bc ≈ Tm, where Tm denotes the delay spread of the channel. Thus, if N is
sufficiently large, the symbol time is much greater than the delay spread, so each subchannel
experiences little ISI degradation.
Data Transmission Using Multiple Carriers
Data Transmission Using Multiple Carriers
The modulated signals associated with all the subchannels are summed together to form the
transmitted signal, given as s(t) = N

where si is the complex symbol associated with the ith subcarrier and φi is the phase offset of
the ith carrier.
In particular, the total required bandwidth for nonoverlapping subchannels is:

where β is the rolloff factor of the pulse shape, Let ε/TN denote the additional bandwidth
required due to time limiting of these pulse shapes.
 Multicarrier Modulation Receiver

In this case nearideal (and hence expensive) lowpass filters will be required to maintain the
orthogonality of the subcarriers at the receiver. Perhaps most importantly, this scheme requires N
independent modulators and demodulators, which entails significant expense, size, and power
consumption.
 Example
Consider a multicarrier system with a total passband bandwidth of 1 MHz. Suppose the system
operates in a city with channel delay spread Tm = 20 µs. How many subchannels are needed to
obtain approximately flat fading in each subchannel

The channel coherence bandwidth is Bc = 1/Tm = 1/.00002 = 50 kHz.

To ensure flat fading on each subchannel, we take BN = B/N = .1Bc << Bc. Thus, N = B/.1Bc =
1000000/5000 = 200 subchannels are needed to ensure flat fading on each subchannel.
In discrete implementations of multicarrier modulation, N must be a power of 2 for the DFT
(discrete Fourier transform) and IDFT (inverse DFT) operations, in which case N = 256 for this
set of parameter
Multicarrier Modulation with Overlapping Subchannels
We can improve on the spectral efficiency of multicarrier modulation by overlapping the subchannels.
The subcarriers must still be orthogonal so that they can be separated out by the demodulator in the
receiver. The subcarriers {cos(2π(f0 + i/TN)t + φi), i = 0, 1, 2, ...} form a set of (approximately)
orthogonal basis functions on the interval [0, TN ] for any set of subcarrier phase offsets {φi}, since

This implies that the minimum frequency separation required for subcarriers to remain orthogonal
over the symbol interval [0, TN ] is 1/TN .
Multicarrier Modulation with Overlapping Subchannels
Excess bandwidth due to time windowing will increase the subcarrier bandwidth by an additional ε/TN .
However, β and ε do not affect the total system bandwidth resulting from the subchannel overlap except
in the first and last subchannels:

The total system bandwidth with overlapping subchannels is given by:

Thus, with N large, the impact of β and ε on the total system bandwidth
is negligible, in contrast to the required bandwidth when the
subchannels do not overlap.
 Example
Consider a multicarrier system with TN = .2 ms: TN >> Tm for Tm the channel delay spread,
so each subchannel experiences minimal ISI. Assume the system has N = 128 subchannels.
If time-limited raised cosine pulses with β = 1 are used and if the additional bandwidth
required (because of time limiting) to ensure minimal power outside the signal bandwidth is
ε = .1, then what is the total bandwidth of the syst

In the prior example TN = .2 ms, N = 128, β = 1, and ε = .1. With overlapping subchannels,
we have: