1 International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS) Vol. 1, No.

2, August 2009

Adaptive Modulation for OFDM Systems

J.Faezah1, and K.Sabira2
Centre for Foundations Studies and Extension Education, Multimedia University, 75450 Melaka, Malaysia. 2 Department of Computer and Communication Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia sabira@eng.upm.edu.my
1

Abstract: The goal for the fourth generation (4G) of mobile communications system is to seamlessly integrate a wide variety of communication services such as high speed data, video and multimedia traffic as well as voice signals. One of the promising approaches to 4G is adaptive OFDM (AOFDM). In AOFDM, adaptive transmission scheme is employed according to channel fading condition with OFDM to improve the performance. In this paper, we have considered only adaptive modulation. First we have investigated the OFDM system performance of uncoded adaptive modulation using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and phase shift keying (PSK). To further enhance the system, we employ convolutional coding to OFDM system. The obtained results show that a significant improvements in terms of bit error rate (BER) and throughput can be achieved demonstrating the superiority of the adaptive modulation schemes compared to fixed transmission schemes. Keywords: Adaptive modulation, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), channel coding, bit error rate(BER), throughput.

by the OFDM subcarriers with highest attenuation resulting in a poor performance. Therefore, in case of frequencyselective fading the error probability decreases very slowly with increasing average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) [2]. This problem can be mitigated if different modulation schemes are employed for the individual OFDM subcarriers. Unlike adaptive serial systems, which employ the same set of parameters for all data symbols in a transmission frame, adaptive OFDM schemes have to be adapted to the SNR of the individual subcarriers. This will substantially improve the performance and data throughput of an OFDM system. For example if the subcarriers that will exhibit high bit error probabilities in the OFDM symbol to be transmitted can be identified and excluded from data transmission, the overall BER can be improved in exchange for a slight loss of system throughput. However the potential loss of throughput due to seclusion of faded subcarriers can be mitigated by employing higher order modulation modes on the subcarriers exhibiting high SNR values. Many adaptive transmission techniques have been presented in the literature. The combination of adaptive modulation with OFDM was proposed as early as 1989 by Kalet which was further developed by Chow [3] and Czylwik [2]. Specifically the results obtained by Czylwik showed that the required SNR for the BER target 10-3 can be reduced by 5dB to 15dB compared to fixed OFDM depending on the scenario of radio propagation. The performance of turbo-coded adaptive modulation are investigated in [4]. Three different modulation mode allocation algorithms were discussed and compared. Further studies on the application of turbo code in adaptive modulation and coding is conducted in [5]. This paper proposed an optimal approach based on prediction of the average BER over all subcarriers. In [6], an adaptive OFDM system with changeable pilot spacing has been proposed. The results showed that a significant improvement in the BER performance is achieved with sacrificing a small value of the total throughput of the system. A work is done on several strategies on bit and power allocation for multi-antenna assisted OFDM systems in [7]. They found out that sometimes power and bit adaptation is required for efficient exploitation of wireless channels in some system conditions. The performance analysis of OFDM systems with adaptive subcarrier bandwidth is investigated by [8]. Further investigations on subcarrier adaptive modulation scheme of

1. Introduction
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a special form of multi-carrier transmission technique in which a single high rate data stream is divided into multiple low rate data streams. These data streams are then modulated using subcarriers which are orthogonal to each other. In this way the symbol rate on each subchannel is greatly reduced, and hence the effect of intersymbol interference (ISI) due to channel dispersion in time caused by multipath delay spread is reduced. Guard interval can also be inserted between OFDM symbols to reduce ISI further. The orthogonality between subcarriers can be maintained, even though the signal passes through a time-dispersive channel by cyclically extending the OFDM symbols into guard interval. The main advantages of OFDM are its multipath delay spread tolerance and efficient spectral usage by allowing overlapping in the frequency domain. Another significant advantage is that the modulation and demodulation can be done using inverse Fast Fourier Transformation (IFFT) and Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT) operations, which are computationally efficient. In an OFDM transmission system, each subcarrier is attenuated individually under the frequency-selective and fast fading channel. The channel performance may be highly fluctuating across the subcarriers and varies from symbol to symbol [1]. If the same fixed transmission scheme is used for all OFDM subcarriers, the error probability is dominated

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Subcarriers are grouped into subband The average instantaneous SNR for each subband are calculated The average instantaneous SNR are compared with the thresholds value to choose the mode

precoded OFDM is presented in [9] under multipath channels. This paper is organized as follows: The system model is described in section 2. The adaptation procedure and switching thresholds used in the simulations are presented next. Section 3 discusses the adaptive modulation systems simulation results. Finally conclusions are made in section 4.

2. System Model
In this paper, subband adaptive transmission schemes are employed to reduce the complexity. In subband adaptive OFDM transmission, all subcarriers in an AOFDM symbol are split into blocks of adjacent subcarriers referred to as subbands. The same mode is employed for all subcarriers of the same subband.[10]. The choice of the modes to be used by the transmitter for its next OFDM symbol is determined by the channel quality estimate of the receiver based on the current OFDM symbol. Perfect channel estimation is assumed in this paper. In this simulation the instantaneous SNR of the subcarrier is measured at the receiver. The channels quality varies across the different subcarriers for frequency selective channels. The received signal at any subcarrier can be expressed as :

The information about modulation and coding used are sent to the transmitter using a feedback channel.

Figure 1. Adaptation procedure 2.1 Block diagram The block diagram of this system is shown in Figure 2. The channel estimation and mode selection are done at the receiver side and the information is sent to the transmitter using a feedback channel [12]. In this model the adaptation is done frame by frame. The channel estimator is used to estimate the instantaneous SNR of the received signal. Based on the instantaneous SNR calculated, the best mode will be chosen for the next transmission frame. This task is done by the mode selector block. At the transmitter the adaptive modulator block consists of different modulators which are used to provide different modulation modes. The switching between these modulators will depend on the instantaneous SNR This block diagram is used to describe two types of adaptive modulation schemes which is based on MQAM and MPSK scheme. The goal of adaptive modulation is to choose the appropriate modulation mode for transmission in each subband, given the local SNR, in order to achieve good trade-off between spectral efficiency and overall BER . 2.2 Switching Thresholds.

Rn = H n X n + Wn (1)
where H n is the channel coefficient at any subcarrier, X n is the transmitted symbol and Wn is the Gaussian noise sample. So the instantaneous SNR can be calculated using

SNRn =
where

Hn No

(2)

N o is the noise variance [7].

The conservative approach in threshold based adaptation is by using the lowest quality subcarrier in each subband for controlling the adaptation algorithm [11]. It means that the lowest value of SNR will be used in mode selection. By using this method, the overall BER in one subband is normally lower than the BER target. If the overall BER can be closer to the BER target by choosing a more suitable modulation mode or code rate, the throughput of the system will be higher [5]. Therefore a better adaptation algorithm is used in this paper to provide a better trade off between throughput and overall BER by choosing a more suitable scheme for each subband. Instead of using the lowest SNR in each subband, the average value of the SNR of the subcarriers in the subband is going to be used.

The switching threshold for activating different modes can be determined by extensive simulation of the fixed mode modulation system. The switching algorithm used for the adaptive modulation schemes are presented in Table 1 till Table 4. The design parameters used in the simulation are listed in Table 5. In this simulation, two types of adaptation modes will be used. The first one is adaptive modulation without transmission blocking and the second one is adaptive modulation with transmission blocking. In adaptive modulation without transmission blocking, data will be constantly transmitted in this scheme even though the channel is in deep fades. If the channel quality is very bad, a robust modulation mode will be used and when the channel quality is good a spectrally efficient modulation will be used.

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OFDM Transmitter
Data Generator Encoder Serial to Parallel Adaptive Modulator IFFT Add Guard Interval Parallel To Serial Mode Selector Channel Estimator Rayleigh Fading Gaussian Noise Serial to Parallel Remove Guard Interval Data Out Decoder Parallel To Serial Adaptive Demodulator FFT

OFDM Receiver Figure 2. Block diagram In adaptive modulation with transmission blocking, transmission will be disabled when the channel is in deep fade. This mode is introduced because the signal quality is too bad to guarantee a required transmission [13]. Data will be transmitted if the channel quality improved. Mode Modulation Thresholds 1 4QAM SNR15.6 dB 2 8QAM 15.6 dB<SNR18.6 dB 3 16QAM 18.6 dB<SNR21.5 dB 4 32QAM 21.5 dB<SNR24.6 dB 5 64QAM SNR>24.6 dB Table 1. Switching threshold for MQAM without transmission blocking Mode Modulation Thresholds 1 No Tx SNR< 10dB 2 4QAM 10 dB<SNR15.6 dB 3 8QAM 15.6 dB<SNR18.6 dB 4 16QAM 18.6 dB<SNR21.5 dB 5 32QAM 21.5 dB<SNR24.6 dB 6 64QAM SNR>24.6 dB Table 2. Switching threshold for MQAM with transmission blocking Mode Modulation Thresholds 1 QPSK SNR16.6 dB 2 8PSK 16.6 dB<SNR22 dB 3 16PSK 22 dB<SNR28.2 dB 4 32PSK SNR>28.2 dB Table 3. Switching threshold for MPSK without transmission blocking Mode Modulation Thresholds 1 No Tx SNR< 11 dB 2 QPSK 11 dB<SNR16.6 dB 3 8PSK 16.6 dB<SNR22 dB 4 16PSK 22 dB<SNR28.2 dB 5 32PSK SNR>28.2 dB Table 4 .Switching threshold for MPSK with transmission blocking

Parameter Value IFFT Size 512 Number of subcarriers 512 Number of subband 32 Number of subcarriers 16 per subband Guard Time Duration 128 Frame size 6 SNR 1-30 dB Modulation scheme MPSK, MQAM Coding rate 2/3, 1/2 ,1/3 and 1/4. Bandwidth 5MHz Carrier Frequency 2 GHz Sampling Frequency 5.4MHz Table 5. System Parameters

3. Simulation Results and Discussion

In this simulation, the performance of adaptive modulation is investigated in terms of throughput and BER performance. To highlight the advantages of adaptive modulation comparison is made to fixed modulation system. Initially the uncoded performance of adaptive modulation based on MQAM and MPSK scheme are investigated. Next convolution coding is employed to the adaptive modulation system. Finally comparison is made between the proposed system and the conservative adaptation system. 3.1 Adaptive Modulation for MQAM systems. 3.1.1 Adaptive Modulation without Blocking (AMQAM-Non blocking) Transmission

In the adaptive modulation system which did not incorporate transmission blocking, the BER performance was better compared to the performance of fixed modulation system as shown in Figure 3.

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Figure 3. BER Performance of adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (AMQAM-Non blocking) The BER performance of adaptive modulation system was better than the most robust modulation mode 4QAM systems in terms of BER performance. This phenomenon was also observed in [14]. As can be seen, the BER remains constant at 10-3 after 25 dB since the scheme is designed to meet the BER target of 10-3. Another aspect of performance improvement is in terms of the decrease of SNR required to meet the BER target. Adaptive modulation scheme is able to meet the BER target at 25 dB compared to more than 28 dB for 4QAM fixed modulation scheme. Figure 4 shows the throughput performance of adaptive modulation scheme without transmission blocking. In terms of throughput performance, it is found that no fixed OFDM system provides better performance while simultaneously providing better throughput. The fixed OFDM system can achieves a higher throughput by using higher level modulation such as 64QAM but poor BER performance. This shows that fixed systems either achieve good throughput performance or good BER performance but not both. Specifically, for low SNR values from (1-10 dB), the throughput performance is similar to 4QAM. This can be explained by the fact that at low SNR values the dominant modes used is 4QAM. As SNR increases more that 10 dB, the throughput performance of AMQAM Non blocking is better than the fixed system with the increase in throughput around 0.5 Bps/Hz. Adaptive modulation system provides the best throughput without sacrificing performance. It is also observed that the throughput achieved by adaptive modulation system is the highest compared to fixed modulation system. Therefore it is proved that adaptive modulation techniques can be used in order to achieve a given target level of BER by choosing the appropriate modulation modes for the instantaneous channel conditions.

Figure 4. Throughput performance for adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (AMQAM-Non blocking) 3.1.2 Adaptive Modulation with Transmission Blocking (AMQAM-Blocking) Figure 5 presents the BER performance AM scheme utilizing transmission blocking. As seen clearly a significant improvement in BER performance for AM with transmission blocking is achieved. The BER performance for all SNR values is successfully decreased to meet the BER target 10-3. At low SNR, the system will enter transmission blocking mode and this will results in no error. Therefore the overall BER can be reduced to meet the BER target. The BER performance is not recorded for the SNR range of (0 - 4dB) because no bits are transmitted at all.
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Figure 5. BER performance for adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (AMQAM-Blocking) In terms of throughput performance, AMQAM-Blocking scheme outperform the fixed modulation scheme as shown in Figure 6. At low SNR (1-13 dB) a slight degradation of throughput performance around 0.3 Bps/Hz can be observed. The decreased in the throughput at low SNR is because most subcarriers will enter no transmission mode thus no bits are transmitted. As the SNR increases more than 13 dB, an increased in the throughput around 0.5 Bps/Hz can be observed.

5 International Journal of Communication Networks and Information Security (IJCNIS)

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Figure 6. Throughput performance for adaptive modulation with transmission blocking. (AMQAM-Blocking) 3.2 Adaptive Modulation for MPSK systems 3.2.1 Adaptive Modulation without Blocking (AMPSK-Non blocking) Transmission

Figure 8. Throughput performance for adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (AMPSK Non blocking) 3.2.1 Adaptive Modulation with Transmission Blocking (AMPSK-Blocking) Figure 9 shows the performance of adaptive modulation with transmission blocking based on MPSK system (AMPSKblocking). It is found that the BER performance of adaptive MPSK scheme nearly meet the BER target 10-3. It can be seen that the required SNR to achieve the BER target is quite high which is more than 25 dB .
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Figure 7 shows the performance of the adaptive modulation scheme without transmission blocking. It can be seen that the BER performance of the adaptive scheme is equal to QPSK for SNR range 1 dB till 15 dB. For SNR more than 15 dB the BER performance is better than all the fixed MPSK system. However the SNR required to meet the BER target is quite high which is more than 25 dB.
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Figure 9. BER performance for adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (AMPSK-Blocking) Figure 10 depicts the throughput performance of adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (AMPSK-blocking) compared to the fixed MPSK system. It can be seen clearly that the throughput performance for the adaptive systems are better compared to all the fixed MPSK systems. Based on the results obtained in this section, it can be said that the performance of adaptive modulation based on MPSK system is not as good as the performance of the adaptive modulation based on MQAM systems since the SNR required to meet the BER target is quite high. Therefore the next section only MQAM modulation is going to be considered in the simulation.

Figure 7. BER performance for adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (AMPSK-Non blocking) Figure 8 shows the throughput performance of the adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (AMPSK- Nonblocking). It can be observed that the throughput performance for the adaptive scheme is better compared to the fixed MPSK scheme. For low SNR values (1-11 dB) the throughput performance is the same with QPSK. For SNR more than 11 dB a gain in throughput around 0.3-0.5 Bps/Hz can be achieved.

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Figure 10. Throughput performance for adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (AMPSK-Blocking) 3.3 Coded Adaptive Modulation Schemes In this section the employment of convolutional code in adaptive modulation system will be investigated. It is known theoretically that the usage of coding can improve the BER performance. Figure 11 shows the BER performance of uncoded and coded adaptive modulation system. It can be seen that the convolutional code provide a considerable coding gain .The achieved coding gain at a BER 10-3 is 3 dB, 7 dB and 9 dB for rate 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4.
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Figure 12. Throughput performance for coded adaptive modulation scheme without blocking (Coded AMQAMNon-blocking) For adaptive modulation with transmission blocking, the similar performance is observed. From Figure 13, it can be seen that the BER performance improve tremendously. Specifically when rate 1/4 code is used, the BER performance decreases below 10-4 for SNR more than 13 dB. These results suggest that more reduction in the BER can be obtained by using channel coding.
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Figure 11. BER performance of coded adaptive modulation without transmission blocking (Coded AMQAM-Non Blocking) Figure 12 shows the throughput performance of uncoded and coded adaptive modulation systems. It is observed that the throughput for the coded adaptive modulation is slightly higher around 0.2 Bps/Hz than uncoded adaptive modulation for low SNR values (1- 8 dB). However the throughput performance of coded adaptive modulation deteriorated at high SNR values. This is due to the redundant information overhead of the channel coding that limits the system throughput. As expected, the 1/4 coding rate results in 1/4 throughput compared to uncoded case. However rate 1/4 code offers a low BER transmission over the channel. From the results obtained, it is concluded that channel coding reduces the SNR required for achieving a given target BER at the expense of a reduced throughput performance.

Figure 14 shows the throughput performance for Coded AMQAM-Blocking scheme. A decrease in the maximum throughput is observed due to the convolutional coding employed. Even though Coded AMQAM-Blocking scheme achieves a good BER performance, there is a trade off where the maximum throughput being limited.
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Figure 14. Throughput performance for coded adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (Coded AMQAMBlocking)

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3.4 Comparison of Adaptive Modulation Schemes. From the analysis done, it can be seen that the uncoded fixed schemes require the highest channel SNR of all examined transmission methods in order to achieve BER target 10-3. By introducing uncoded adaptive modulation without transmission blocking, the BER performance can be improved to meet the BER target. At the same time the throughput is higher compared to the fixed scheme. To improve the performance further, adaptive modulation with transmission blocking is employed. It is observed that the BER target was achieved for all SNR when we utilized transmission blocking. The results presented here is comparable to the results presented in [14]. Thus the advantage of using an adaptive scheme with transmission blocking is that the performance can be designed to meet a certain required BER. However the disadvantage is that the utilization of the transmission blocking results in transmission latency. The BER performance of adaptive modulation can be further improved by using channel coding. However both coded adaptive modulation without transmission blocking and with transmission blocking schemes suffer from limited throughput as the channel coding limits the data throughput by a factor of its coding rate. However for low SNR values the performance of both coded AM scheme is better than uncoded AM scheme. In summary, the AM scheme has its advantages when compared to individual fixed modulation modes in terms of its BER performance and throughput performance. Note however for the adaptive scheme without transmission blocking that the target BER can only be achieved if the channel SNR is higher than 24 dB respectively. Table 6 shows the comparison of the adaptive modulation schemes in terms of the SNR required to meet the BER target and the maximum throughput achieved at SNR 30 dB. In this section, we also found that the adaptive modulation based on MQAM scheme is better than adaptive modulation based on MPSK system. 3.5 Performance Comparison.

algorithm are increased by approximately 0.3 Bps/Hz for the entire range of SNR values.
Scheme Uncoded AM-Non Blocking Uncoded AM-Blocking Uncoded AM-Non Blocking Uncoded AM-Blocking Coded AM-Non Blocking (rate1/2) Coded AM-Non Blocking (rate 1/3) Coded AM-Non Blocking (rate 1/4) Coded AM-Blocking (rate 1/2) Coded AM-Blocking (rate 1/3) Coded AM-Blocking (rate 1/4) SNR required to meet BER target(dB) 24 24 22 19 16 Maximum Throughput (Bps/Hz) 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 2.5 1.7 1.25 2.5 1.75 1.25

Table 6. Performance comparison of adaptive modulation schemes. However the BER performance using the conservative adaptation algorithm is much lower than the target BER. This can be explained by the adaptation regime which was based on the principle of using the lowest SNR of the subcarrier in each subband for mode selection leading to pessimistic estimate for the entire group [15].
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Lastly, a comparison is made between the adaptive transmission scheme using the proposed adaptation algorithm and the adaptive transmission scheme using the conservative adaptation algorithm. The conservative approach is based on the poorest subcarrier in a subband. The comparison is made only for the adaptive scheme utilizing transmission blocking. This is because the performance of adaptive scheme utilizing transmission blocking is more superior compared to adaptive scheme without transmission blocking. Figure 15 shows the BER performance of the adaptive modulation scheme using the proposed adaptation algorithm and the conservative adaptation algorithm. It can be observed that both BER performances manage to meet the BER target. In terms of throughput performance, there is a slight improvement gained by adaptive modulation with transmission blocking using the proposed adaptation algorithm as shown in Figure 16. It can be seen that the throughput of the AM-Blocking scheme using the proposed

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Figure 15. BER performance of adaptive modulation with transmission blocking (AM Blocking)
4.5 4 3.5 Throughput (Bps/Hz) 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 1 4 7 10 13 16 SNR (dB) 19 22 25 28 30 Adaptive modulation (proposed) Adaptive modulation (others)

Figure 16. Throughput performance of adaptive modulation with transmission blocking. (AM-Blocking)

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4. Conclusions
In this paper, the performances of adaptive transmission scheme for OFDM have been investigated. The advantage of employing adaptive transmission scheme is described by comparing their performance with fixed transmission system. A better adaptation algorithm is used to improve the throughput performance. This algorithm utilizes the average value of the instantaneous SNR of the subcarriers in the subband as the switching parameter. The results show an improved throughput performance with considerable BER performance.

References
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