EUROPEAN TRANSACTIONS ON TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184 (DOI: 10.1002/ett.964)

Special Issue on Multi-Carrier Spread-Spectrum

Analysis of cellular interference for MC-CDMA and its impact
on channel estimationy
Gunther Auer1*, Stephan Sand2, Armin Dammann2 and Stefan Kaiser2
1
DoCoMo Euro-Labs, Landsberger Strasse 312, 80687 Munchen, Germany
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Communications & Navigation, 82234 Wessling, Germany

SUMMARY
We address the downlink of a cellular multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) system taking into account
channel estimation. The system performance in presence of a synchronization mismatch between two
interfering base stations (BS) is analyzed in the way that a mobile terminal receives the perfectly
synchronized signal from the desired BS as well as the signal from one interfering BS with a
synchronization offset. It is demonstrated through simulations that spreading and cell specific random
subcarrier interleaving effectively decorrelates the interfering signal, independent of the synchronization
offset. Furthermore, the robustness of the channel estimator to cellular interference is examined.
Copyright # 2004 AEI.

1. INTRODUCTION
Multicarrier (MC) modulation, in particular orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) [1], has been
successfully applied to various digital communications
systems. OFDM can be efficiently implemented by using
the discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Furthermore, for
the transmission of high data rates its robustness in transmission through dispersive channels is a major advantage.
For MC-CDMA, spreading in frequency and/or time direction is introduced in addition to the OFDM modulation [2
4]. MC-CDMA has been deemed a promising candidate
for the downlink of future mobile communications systems
[5, 6], and has recently been implemented by NTT DoCoMo in an experimental system [7].
Recently, there has been growing interest in applying
an OFDM-based air interface to cellular systems. We
focus on a system which should be robust against interference, rather than trying to avoid interference, as this
ultimately would require inter-cell synchronization, which
comes along with a significant signaling overhead. This

means that inter-cell interference can be significant, especially if the system is to operate with high frequency reuse
factor.
For a cellular multicarrier system where adjacent base
stations (BS) are not synchronized, the cellular interference is generally dependent on the synchronization offset
between interfering base stations. For an unsynchronized
system, the interference observed at a certain subcarrier
stems from all interfering subcarriers. So, the interference
can be modeled as white Gaussian noise. For a perfectly
synchronized system, on the other hand, orthogonality
between subcarriers is preserved and the interference can
be described on the subcarrier level, which may not be
Gaussian. In such a case, spreading, cell specific random
interleaving, and scrambling of subcarriers can be used
to decorrelate the interfering and desired signal [8].
Cellular interference not only corrupts the transmitted
data but also the pilot symbols used for channel estimation.
We focus on pilot-symbol aided channel estimation
(PACE), where pilot symbols are periodically inserted in
the time-frequency grid of the multicarrier signal. Channel

* Correspondence to: Gunther Auer, DoCoMo Euro-Labs, Landsberger Strasse 312, 80687 Munchen, Germany. E-mail: auer@docomolab-euro.com
y
This paper has been presented in part at the 4th International Workshop on Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum (MC-SS 2003), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.

Copyright # 2004 AEI

Accepted 20 January 2004

174

G. AUER ET AL.

estimation is performed exclusively by using the pilot

symbols. Unlike data symbols which can be protected by
means of spreading and/or channel coding, pilots cannot
be protected in such a way. One way to mitigate this problem is to use a pilot reuse factor being larger than the frequency reuse factor for the data symbols [9]. Such a
system, however, requires full synchronization between
all BSs of the cellular system, which may be difficult to
realize in practice. Therefore, we compare the performance of a cellular MC-CDMA system with a pilot and
data reuse factor of one, with a sytem having a data reuse
of one and a pilot reuse of three. To this end, the system
performance of both approaches is investigated in a twocell scenario, dependent on the synchronization offset
between two interfering BSs. In Reference [8], the effects
of a synchronization offset were analyzed for a cellular
multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) system with perfect
channel state information (CSI). In this paper, the effects
of celluar interference are studied in case channel estimation is taken into account.

2. SYSTEM AND CHANNEL MODEL

Figure 1(a) shows the block diagram of a MC-CDMA
transmitter for Nu users. The bit stream for each user is
encoded with a convolutional code, bit interleaved by the
outer interleaver Pout, and fed to the symbol mapper. The
symbol mapper for user u assigns log2 M bits to complexvalued data symbols, du k
, according to different alphabets, like PSK or QAM with cardinality M. Each data symbol is spread with a WalshHadamard sequence with a
variable spreading factor L 5 Nu. Given the vector,

T
dk
d 1 k
; . . . ; dNu k
, consisting of the kth symbol
of all Nu users, the spreading operation results inz
sk
CL dk
s1 k
; . . . ; sL k

T

where CL represents the L  Nu spreading matrix. The system load of the MC-CDMA system is Nu =L and can be
adjusted between 1 and 1=L. The spreading operation is
used to achieve a multiple access scheme for Nu users.
The spreading factor L can be significantly smaller than
the number of available subcarriers Nc . In this case each
user may transmit Nd Nc =L data streams in parallel.
The output of the spreader (1) is grouped into Nd blocks,
s sT Nd
; . . . ; sT 1Nd  1

T , to yield Nc spread
chips per OFDM symbol. Given a MC-CDMA system
having Nc subcarriers and a frame length of Nframe OFDM
symbols, the block length of the code word of one particular user is MNframe Nc =L bits, which corresponds to
Nframe Nc =L spread blocks sk
per OFDM frame, with
0 4 k < Nd Nframe .
Generally, the multiple access for an OFDM-based air
interface is very flexible. CDMA can be combined with
FDMA or TDMA, termed M&Q modification in Reference [10]. To this end, the spread blocks sk
may also
be assigned to different users, which allows to support a
maximum of Nc users per OFDM symbol. Moreover, one
may choose to assign various spreading codes to one user,
in which case one user can use all Nc subcarriers. For the
sake of simplicity, we will restrict to a MC-CDMA system
described above, having Nu 4 L users, each user transmitting Nd Nc =L symbols per OFDM symbol.
Subsequently, the spread chips of the th OFDM symbol, s , is frequency interleaved by the inner interleaver,
m
Pin , over one OFDM symbol to maximize the diversity
gain. More specifically, we choose a cell specific random
m
interleaver for Pin , where m identifies the BS. The purpose
m
of Pin is twofold: first, by increasing the distance between
adjacent spread symbols a diversity gain is achieved; second, the inter-cell interference between adjacent BSs is
randomized. The interleaver produces the output
h
iT
m
m
m
m
X Pin s X;1 ; . . . ; X;Nc
2
where the interleaved symbol of the th OFDM symbol,
m
at subcarrier i, is denoted by X;i . In order to distinguish

Figure 1. Block diagram of the MC-CDMA system; (a) transmitter, (b) receiver.
Copyright # 2004 AEI

z
Given a matrix X, the operators X , XT , XH and X1 denote the conjugate complex, transpose, Hermitian transpose, and inverse of X respectively.

Variables which can be viewed as values in the frequency domain, such

m
as X;i , where each entry modulates a certain subcarrier, are written in
capital letters.

Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184

ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR INTERFERENCE FOR MC-CDMA AND ITS IMPACT ON CHANNEL ESTIMATION

signals from different BSs and to further randomize the

m
transmitted signal, X;i is scrambled by a complex cell spem
m

m pm
cific random sequence, pi , to yield X
i X;i . The
;i
scrambler has cardinality Ms and the Ms discrete signal
points are chosen according to a PSK constellation. An
inverse DFT (IDFT) with NDFT 5 Nc points is performed
m
on each block to yield the time domain signal x;n
m

g. Subsequently a guard interval (GI) having
IDFTfX
;i
NGI samples is inserted in the form of a cyclic prefix.
After D/A conversion, the signal xm t is transmitted
over a mobile radio channel. The considered MC-CDMA
receiver employs NR receive antennas, all of which are
assumed to be mutually uncorrelated. The signal transmitted from BS m to receive antenna
is the convolution
of the time variant channel with the transmitted signal. The
corresponding received equivalent baseband signal without noise can be expressed as
 max
zm;
t
hm;
t;   xm t   d
3
0

Assuming perfect synchronization and neglecting cellular

interferece for the moment, the received signal of the
equivalent baseband system at sampling instants t
n Nsym
Tspl is denoted by

4

y;n y
n Nsym

zm;
n Nsym
n
n Nsym

where n

represents a sample of additive white Gaussian

noise (AWGN), Nsym NDFT NGI accounts for the number of samples per OFDM symbol and Tspl is the sampling
duration. After sampling and sychronization, the Nsym samples are grouped together into a block. The first NGI samples
representing the guard interval are discarded. A DFT on the
remaining NDFT signal samples is performed to obtain


the


output of the OFDM demodulation, Y
;i DFT y;n .


The last NDFT  Nc DFT outputs of Y
;i contain zero subcarriers which are dismissed. Subsequently, the cell specific
m;

m


scrambling sequence is removed, Y;i pi
 Y;i . We
assume the guard interval to be longer than the maximum
delay of the channel max . The received signal after OFDM
demodulation in an isolated cell, i.e. neglecting cellular
interference, is in the form [11]
m;

Y;i
m
X ;i ,

m;

H ;i

m;

X ;i H ;i


N;i

N;i

where
and
denote the transmitted symbol
from BS m having an energy per symbol of Es , the channel
transfer function (CTF) from BS m to receive antenna

and AWGN with zero mean and variance N0 respectively.
Copyright # 2004 AEI

175

2.1. Data detection

The OFDM demodulation is performed independently for
all NR receive antennas. Maximum ratio combining
(MRC) is performed to combine the NR signals. Provided
perfect synchronization and perfect CSI the output of the
MRC unit becomes
m
Y;i

NR
X

m;
 m;

Y;i

H ;i

1
m

X ;i

NR 
NR

X
 m;
2 X m;


H ;i N;i
H ;i 

1

|{z}

1

 m2
H
;i

m2


where H
;i 2 R accounts for the coherently combined
m;

power of the CTFs. In a practical system, the CSI H ;i
m;

^
is replaced by its estimate H
;i . By using MRC receive
antenna diversity provides an NR -fold improvement of
the averge signal to noise ratio (SNR), as well as an additional NR -fold diversity gain, due to the mutually uncorrelated fading assumption.
A block diagram of a MC-CDMA receiver is depicted in
Figure 1(b). Due to frequency selective fading of the multipath fading channel and the random interleaving of the
spread chips, the orthogonality of the spreading sequences
cannot be maintained and multiple access interference
(MAI) occurs [12]. Various detection schemes for MCCDMA have been proposed in the literature, both linear
and non-linear [10, 12, 13]. An efficient compromise
between reducing MAI and utilizing the diversity of the
frequency selective channel is the linear minimum mean
squared error (MMSE) detector [14]. Applying the MMSE
m  m
criterion to the MRC output Y;i =H
;i with the constraint
of a one tap equalizer, the linear MMSE detector becomes
^ m
X
;i

m
Y;i

 m2 1
H
;i
g

where gc denotes the average SNR per subcarrier, which is

gc NLu NNR E0 s for the single transmitter scenario.
^ m ,
The equalized signal sequence of OFDM symbol , X

m1
is subsequently deinterleaved by Pin . Next, the subblock rk
r1 k
; . . . ; rL k

T containing symbol k of
the Nu users is despread
h
iT
^k
CH rk
d^1 k
; . . . ; d^Nu k

d
L

yielding the soft decided values, d^u k
, corresponding to

symbol d u k
. All soft decided values of the desired user
Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184

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G. AUER ET AL.

u
of one frame, fd^ k
g, are combined to a serial data
stream. The symbol demapper maps the data symbols into
bits, by also calculating the log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for
each bit, which serves as reliability information for the
decoder [15, 16]. According to References [15, 16] LLRs
are the optimum values which can be exploited by a
Viterbi decoder. The symbol demapper assumes the MAI
u
of fd^k g to be white Gaussian noise with zero mean and
appropriately scaled variance [10, 13]. The codebits are
deinterleaved and finally decoded using a soft-in soft-out
channel decoder. We use the Max-Log MAP algorithm
for the channel decoder [17, 18], which is an approximation of the optimum maximum a posteriori (MAP) symbol-by-symbol detector [19].

2.2. Channel model

hm;
t; 

Q0
X



m;

hm;

t





q
q

q1
m;

are the complex amplitude and

where hq t and q
delay of the qth channel tap. It is assumed that the Q0 channel taps are mutually uncorrelated and that all tap delays
are within the range 0; max
. Due to the motion of
m;

the mobile, hq t will be time-variant caused by the
Doppler effect. The CIR spectrum is band-limited by the
maximum Doppler frequency fD;max. However, the CIR
needs to be approximately constant during one OFDM
m;

m;

symbol, so h;q  hq t, t Tsym ; 1Tsym
. The
m;

channel of the qth tap, h;q , impinging with time delay
m;

q , is a wide sense stationary (WSS) complex Gaussian
random variable with zero mean.
The CTF of Equation (5), is the Fourier transform of the
channel impulse response. Sampling the result at time
t Tsym and frequency f i=T, the CTF becomes
m;

H;i

m;

0m;

00m;

RHH i; 
RHH i
 RHH 

H m;
Tsym ; i=T

Q0
X

m;

m;

h;q ej2p q

i=T

10

q1

where Tsym NDFT NGI Tspl and T NDFT Tspl represent the OFDM symbol duration with and without the
guard interval.
The discrete two dimensional (2D) frequency correlam;
m;

m;

tion function, EH;i H;ii
RHH i; 
, specifies the correlation between subcarriers and OFDM
Copyright # 2004 AEI

11

Provided that all channel taps are mutually uncorrelated,

the frequency correlation is determined by
0m;

RHH i

Q0
X

m;

2 j2p q
m;

e
q

i=T

12

q1
m;
2

m;

Ejh;q j2
denotes the average power of

where q
tap q. Assuming Jakes model [22], the correlation in time
is described by a Bessel function
00m;

We consider a time-variant, frequency selective, Rayleigh

fading channel, modeled by a tapped delay line with Q0
non-zero taps [20]. The channel impulse response (CIR)
is described by

m;

symbols spaced i=T Hz and   Tsym sec apart. It is generally assumed that the fading in time and frequency direcm;

tion is independent. Thus, RHH i; 
can be expressed
in the product form

RHH 
J0 2p  fD;max Tsym

13

where fD;max is the maximum Doppler frequency and J0 

accounts for a zero-order Bessel function of the first kind.
In the above channel model shadowing is not taken into
account. While shadowing will have effects in a cellular
system, for broad band channels the effects of shadowing
will be reduced as the number of independent fading taps
increases [21]. Furthermore, power control and/or fast cell
selection may further compensate shadowing variations.
2.3. Synchronization offset
For synchronization the following parameters cause disturbances in the receiver [23]:
 The transmitter carrier frequency oscillators may be
mistuned, resulting in a carrier frequency offset, f ,
that can be modeled as a time-variant phase offset
t f t. A carrier frequency offset will cause
inter-carrier interference (ICI), i.e. the orthogonality
between subcarriers is lost.
 The transmitter time scale is unknown to the receiver.
Therefore, the receiver OFDM symbol window controlling the removal of the guard interval will usually be offset from its ideal setting by a time T, termed symbol
timing offset.
Generally, the received signal having a synchronization
mismatch between transmit BS m and receive antenna

can be described by
y
t ej2p tf

 zm;
t  T m n
t

14

where zm;
t was defined in Equation (3). It is assumed

that the synchronization offset is the same for all receive
Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184

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ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR INTERFERENCE FOR MC-CDMA AND ITS IMPACT ON CHANNEL ESTIMATION

antennas. However, the synchronization offset may be

transmitter dependent, since the BSs are assumed to operate asynchronous. In order to avoid inter-symbol interference (ISI) and ICI due to a symbol timing offset, the
following relation must be satisfied
T m 4 TGI  max

15

So, if the guard interval, TGI , is equal or longer than the

maximum delay of the channel, max , plus the symbol timing offset, T m , ISI can be avoided. Requirements for the
symbol time offset are rather relaxed, since the OFDM
symbol duration is NDFT times the sampling duration,
where NDFT is in the order of several hundreds to a few
thousands. After OFDM demodulation, a symbol timing
offset rotates the phase of the received signal, having the
same effect than a time delay induced by the channel [24].
In the absence of ISI (correct timing synchronization),
demodulation of the th received OFDM symbol via
DFT yields [23, 25]

m;

Y;i Ji;i H;i X;i

N
c 1
X

m;

Jk;i H;k X;k N;i

16

k0
k6i

|{z}

Figure 2. Block diagram of the cellular MC-CDMA system

simulator.

Es =E, having a timing offset T I and a carrier frequency offset f I . So, E accounts for the difference
in received signal power between the two interfering
BSs. It is well known that the effects of a carrier frequency
offset for OFDM on the link level are very severe [23, 25,
26]. On the other hand, considering an interfering signal
the situation is somewhat different. Basically, the power
of the interference will not change due to a synchronization offset. However, the characteristics of the interference
might depend on the synchronization offset. After sampling at the mobile terminal the received signal at receive
antenna
is in the form

ICI

where
m

m
Jk;i

ejpEk;i


=NDFT
NDFT ejpEm
k;i



m
sin pEk;i



m
sin pEk;i =NDFT

y;n z0;
n Nsym
nn Nsym

17

accounts for the ICI from subcarriers k to i. The cross-subcarrier local frequency offsets are
m

Ek;i f m T k  i

18

For perfect synchronization, f m 0, then Equation (18)

m
simplifies to Ek;i k  i. Hence, the ICI term disappears
and Equation (5) is obtained. The effects of a frequency
offset are: first, a loss of orthogonality between subcarriers, resulting in ICI; second, the amplitudes of the DFT
m
m
outputs are reduced by approximately sin pEi;i =pEi;i ;
m
third, a subcarrier symbol rotation proportional to Ei;i .
2.4. Assessing the effects of cellular interference
A block diagram of how the cellular interference is modeled is shown in Figure 2. It is assumed that the mobile
terminal is perfectly synchronized with the BS transmitting the desired signal, which is received with an energy
per symbol of Es . The signal from the interfering BS is
received at the mobile with energy per symbol of
Copyright # 2004 AEI

expj2p f I nTspl I;

p
z n  nI Nsym
19
E

where nI T I =Tspl is the normalized symbol timing

offset, z0;

and zI;

from Equation (3) represent the
received signal of the desired and interfering BS without
noise. Generally, signal components corresponding to the
desired and interfering BS are marked by the superscript
0 and I respectively.
In the absence of ISI (correct timing synchronization),
m;

the DFT of y;i after descrambling, comprising the
received signal from the perfectly synchronized desired
BS and an interfering signal with a carrier frequency offset, is given by
c 1
1 NX


0;
0
I I;
I


Y;i H;i X;i p
Jk;i H;k X;k N;i 20
E k0

where the ICI term from the interfering BS, Jk;i , is

given by Equation (17). The first and second terms in
Equation (20) describe the desired and the interfering
signal respectively.
Due to cellular interference, the carrier to interference
ratio, gc , at the input of the MMSE equalizer from
Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184

178

G. AUER ET AL.

Equation (20) needs to be adujusted according to

gc

1
E

NR
NE0s NLu

21

2.4.1. Gaussian approximation. A very simple approximation is to model the entire interference as Gaussian noise,
by appropriately scaling the variance of the AWGN term.
By applying the Gaussian approximation (GA) the
received signal after OFDM demodulation in Equation
(20) is approximated by

0;

Y;i  H ;i X ;i ;i

22

where ;i denotes the resulting AWGN term having the

E s Nu
variance 2 N0 E
L . This model is very simple to
implement, since no information about the interfering
signal apart from the average signal strength is required,
which makes it very attractive for system level simulations.
For large synchronization offsets ICI is the major source
of interference, so the Gaussian approximation appears
appropriate. For small synchronization offsets, however,
most interference stems from one subcarrier only, so the
resulting interference is non-Gaussian. Compared to the
received signal of the synchronized system, f 0 and
T 0 in Equation (20), the Gaussian approximation is
I;

justified if Z ;i is an AWGN process, which implies that
I;

I;

either X ;i or H ;i are Gaussian. In general this is not the
I;

case, since X ;i is randomly taken from a finite set of
I;

complex values, while H ;i is Gaussian (for Rayleigh
fading) but not white, since adjacent subcarriers and
OFDM symbols are strongly correlated. However, in the
considered MC-CDMA system scrambling, random interI;

leaving and spreading decorrelate H ;i . So the Gaussian
I;

approximation is justified if H ;i can be sufficiently
decorrelated.

and frequency. For 2D-PACE the pilot symbols are scattered throughout the time-frequency grid, yielding a 2D
pilot grid. A scattered pilot grid is used, for example in
the terrestrial digital TV standard DVB-T. 2D filtering
algorithms have been proposed for PACE, based on 2D
Wiener filter interpolation [28, 29].
To describe PACE, it is useful to define a subset of the
received signal sequence containing only the pilots,{
m
~ m
fX
g fX;i g, with ~Dt and i ~iDf . The quantities
~;~i
Df and Dt denote the pilot spacing in frequency and time,
respectively. If a scattered pilot grid is used, the received
OFDM frame is sampled in two dimensions, with rate
Df =T and Dt Tsym in frequency and time, respectively. In
order to reconstruct the signal, there exists a maximum
Df and Dt , dependent on the maximum delay of the channel, max , and the maximum Doppler frequency fD;max. By
applying the sampling theorem, the following relation
must be satisfied [29]:
Df max =T 4 bf

and Dt fD;max Tsym 4

1
b
2 t

23

where bf 51 and bt 51 denote the oversampling factor in

frequency and time, respectively. According to Reference
[29], a oversampling factor of bf ; bt  2 provides a good
compromise between performance and overhead due to
pilots.
According to Equation (11), the 2D correlation function
of the channel can be factored into a time and frequency
correlation function, which enables a cascaded channel
estimator, consisting of two one-dimensional (1D) estimators, termed two by 1D (2  1D) PACE. The basic idea of
2  1D-PACE is illustrated in Figure 3. First, channel estimation is performed in frequency direction, at OFDM
symbols ~Dt , yielding tentative estimates for all subcarriers of that OFDM symbol. The second step is to use
these tentative estimates as new pilots, in order to estimate

3. CHANNEL ESTIMATION
Pilot-symbol aided channel estimation (PACE) is based on
periodically inserting known symbols, termed pilot symbols, in the transmitted data sequence. PACE was first
introduced for single carrier systems and required a flatfading channel [27]. If the pilot spacing is sufficiently
close, the channel response of data symbols at an arbitrary
position can be reconstructed by exploiting the correlation
of the recived signal. When extending the idea of PACE to
multi-carrier systems, it must be taken into account that
the received signal is correlated in two dimensions, in time
Copyright # 2004 AEI

Figure 3. Principle of 2  1D pilot-symbol aided channel estimation (PACE).

{

As a general convention, variables describing pilot symbols will be

marked with a ~ (tilde) in the following.

Euro. Trans. Telecomms. 2004; 15:173184

ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR INTERFERENCE FOR MC-CDMA AND ITS IMPACT ON CHANNEL ESTIMATION

the channel for the entire frame [29]. It was demonstrated

in Reference [29], that 2  1D-PACE is significantly less
complex to implement with respect to optimum 2D
channel estimation, while there is little degradation in
performance.
Generally, it is of great computational complexity to use
all available pilots. Instead, a 2D window of size Mf  Mt
can be slid over the whole time-frequency grid, with


Mf < Nc =Df and Mt < Nframe =Dt . Let Y;i be the symbol
within the received frame to be detected. Then, the sliding


window is placed such that Y;i is located within the centre
with respect to i and . Only at the beginning and end of the


frame, as well as near the band edges, Y;i cannot be
placed within the centre of the sliding window.
Channel estimation is performed separately for each
receive antenna
. An initial estimate of the CTF at
pilot positions is obtained by removing the cell specific

0;
X
~ 0  Y~
, with
modulation of the pilots, H
~;~i
~;~i
~;~i
0
0
~~  X
~ ~ 1.
X
;~i
;~i
The estimator for 2  1D-PACE can be expressed as
b 0;

H
;i

Mt
X

Wn00 

n1

Mf
X

~ ~
Wm0 i  H
n;im

24

Doppler frequency fD;filter fulfill these requirements. The

Fourier transform of a uniform power delay profile which
is non-zero within the range 0; filter
, yields the frequency
correlation
R0HH i

T sin p filter i=T jp filter i=T

e
p filter i

25

Accordingly, the Fourier transform of a uniform Doppler

power spectrum being non-zero within the range
fD;filter ; fD;filter
, yields the correlation in time direction
R00HH 

sin 2p fD;filter  Tsym

2p fD;filter  Tsym

26

It is important to note that the parameters of the robust estimator should always be equal or larger than the worst case
channel conditions, i.e. largest propagation delays and
maximum expected velocity of the mobile user, so
filter 5 max and fD;filter 5 fD;max . Furthermore, the average
SNR at the filter input, gfilter , which is used to generate the
filter coefficients, should be equal or larger than actual
average SNR, so gfilter 5gc . In order to determine the channel estimator only filter, fD;filter and gfilter are required.

m1

where W00  W100 ; . . . ; W 00 Mt 
represents a

finite impulse response (FIR) interpolation filter in time
direction with filter delay  Dt ~  . The filter in frequency direction W0 i W10 i; . . . ; W 0 Mf i

depends on the location of the subcarrier to be estimated,
i, relative to the pilot positions, i Df~i  i.
The optimal filter in the sense of minimizing the mean
squared error (MSE) is the Wiener filter [30]. The estimators W0 i and W00  are obtained by solving the
Wiener-Hopf equation in frequency and time direction
respectively. For the Wiener filter in time and frequency,
the correlation functions (12) and (13) as well as the average SNR at the filter input, gc of Equation (21), are
required.

3.1. Mismatched estimator

It may be prohibitive to estimate the filter coefficients during operation in real time. Alternatively, a robust estimator
with a model mismatch may be chosen [31]. The filters
W0 i and W00  are designed such that they cover a
great variety of power delay profiles and Doppler power
spectra. According to Reference [31], a rectangular shaped
power delay profile with maximum delay filter and a rectangular shaped Doppler power spectrum with maximum
Copyright # 2004 AEI

179

4. SYSTEM SCENARIOS
In case the mobile is near the cell/sector boundary, E in
Equation (19) will be close to one, so the carrier to interference ratio, gc , for a single antenna receiver approaches
0 dB. In order to maintain a reliable connection the system
may not be operated fully loaded, so Nu < L. Furthermore,
we employ NR receive antennas in order to exploit spatial
diversity and to benefit from an NR fold SNR gain. However, to achieve these gains reliable channel estimation is
essential. Moreover, the spectral efficiency is compromised if Nu < L for the entire system, even for users which
observe little interference. This problem can be mitigated
if users are grouped together which are close to the cell
boundaries with 50% load (Nu L=2) and QPSK modulation; other users which experience little interference may
be allocated 100% load and higher order modulation.
Alternatively, a frequency reuse factor of 3 may be used
for outer parts of the cell/sector as suggested in Reference
[32]. Even for such a scheme it is of interest to closely analyze cellular interference, since the resulting sector
throughput increases if the portion of the sector having a
frequency reuse above one can be kept as small as
possible. In any case, optimization of the throughput per
cell, sector or beam is beyond the scope of this paper.
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G. AUER ET AL.

Rather the characterization of the cellular interference is of

interest.
Cellular interference not only corrupts the transmitted
data but also the pilot symbols used for channel estimation.
Near the cell boundaries the channel estimation performance may deteriorate, which effectively reduces the
achievable throughput. One way to mitigate this problem
is to use a pilot reuse factor being larger than the frequency
reuse factor for the data symbols, rp > rd , as suggested in
Reference [9]. However, for interference free reception of
the pilots, such a system requires full synchronization
within all BSs of the cellular systems, which may be difficult to realize in practice.
We compare two system scenarios: first, a cellular system with a pilot and data reuse factor of one, rp rd 1
(system A); second, a cellular system with a data reuse of
one, rd 1 and a pilot reuse of three, rp 3 (system B).
While the performance of system A will degrade near the
cell boundaries due to strong cellular interfence, system B
will be more sensitive to a synchronization offset.

5. SIMULATION RESULTS
The bit error rate (BER) performance of the cellular MCCDMA system is evaluated by computer simulations. The
system parameters of the MC-CDMA system and of the
channel model were taken from Reference [7] and are
shown in Table 1. All BSs are using exactly the same system parameters, i.e. the same spreading length L, number
of active users Nu etc. This implies that if Nu decreases, the
cellular interference also decreases. However, the difference in received signal power between interfering BSs,
E, does remain constant. The channel is modeled by a
tap delay line model with Q0 12 taps, a tap spacing of
 16  Tspl , with an exponential decaying power delay

Figure 4. The power delay profile of the used channel model.

profile, as illustrated in Figure 4. The independent fading

taps are generated using Jakes model [22], each having a
maximum Doppler frequency of fD;max 104  Tsym , with
Tsym defined in Equation (10), corresponding to a mobile
velocity of about 3 km/h @5 GHz carrier frequency. For
the parameters of the robust channel estimator, also
depicted in Table 1, we assume that the maximum delay
of the channel, the maximum Doppler frequency and the
average SNR is known to the receiver, so filter max ,
fD;filter fD;max and gfilter gc . A pilot spacing of Df 3
in frequency and Dt 9 in time was used throughout.
Thus, System A with rp 1 has a pilot overhead of about
4% compared to an overhead of 12% for System B with
rp 3.
Figure 5 shows the BER against the difference in
received signal power between the two interfering BSs,
E, for various number of users Nu . Curves with solid
lines show results for a perfectly synchronized system.
Clearly, the system performance improves with decreasing
system load Nu =L, since the multiple access interference
(MAI) reduces with decreasing load. An error floor is
observed due to AWGN, which was set to Eb =N0
10 dB throughout. Results for a system where the cellular
interference was modeled by white Gaussian noise (WGN)
with appropriate variance, i.e. the Gaussian approximation
(GA), are also included in the graph and are drawn with
dashed lines. Generally, results for the GA are better than

Table 1. MC-CDMA system parameters.

Bandwidth
B
101.5 MHz
# subcarriers
Nc
769
FFT length
NDFT
1024
Guard interval (GI) length
NGI
226
Sample duration
Tspl
7.4 ns
Frame length
Nframe
64
Spreading Factor
L
16
Modulation
QPSK
Channel coding rate
r
1/2
Parameters for mismatched channel estimator
Pilot spacing freq. & time
{Df, Dt}
{3, 9}
Filter dimension freq. & time
{Mf, Mt}
{13, 4}
Copyright # 2004 AEI

Figure 5. BER versus E@Eb/N0 10 dB for a MC-CDMA

system with different number of users Nu and perfect CSI.
NR 1.
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ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR INTERFERENCE FOR MC-CDMA AND ITS IMPACT ON CHANNEL ESTIMATION

the fully synchronized system. The reason is, for the linear
MMSE equalizer of Equation (7) the interference term is
assumed to be WGN, which is exactly the case for the GA.
However, it is seen in Figure 5 that the GA curves closely
match the performance of the fully synchronized cellular
system, especially for high system loads. Moreover, it
was reported in Reference [8] that the GA is accurate even
for lower spreading factors. Obviously, if results for the
GA and a perfectly synchronized system are equivalent,
cellular interference with arbitrary synchronization offsets
are accurately modeled by the GA. This is a somewhat
unexpected result since on a link level the MAI of MCCDMA cannot be modeled by the GA. Only for the single
user case the difference between GA and the fully synchronized system is more than 0.5 dB. In this case, the interfering signal of the fully synchronized system is caused by
one users signal only. Therefore, the degradation with
respect to the GA increases.
Since the GA accurately describes the system performance even for a fully synchronized system, the signal
from the interfering BSs is observed as WGN at the
I
mobile. This means that the interfering signal, Z;i
I I
X;i H;i from Equation (20), is sufficiently decorrelated
by cell specific interleaving, scrambling and spreading.
Figure 6(a) shows the BER versus E for the considered MC-CDMA system with half load, Nu 8, having
NR 1 and two receive antennas. Clearly, there is a significant diversity gain if two receive antennas are used. This
is true for any system scenario. It is seen that the difference
between System A and the receiver with perfect CSI for
one receive antenna is about 1 dB. It appears that the
degradation of the channel estimator due to interference
is proportional to the overall performance. If the interference is high the performance is so poor that the additional
degradation due to channel estimation is not a major problem. On the other hand, if the interference is low, the pilot
symbols are not corrupted by interference as well. The performance for System B, where the pilots are received without interference, is roughly in-between the curves for
System A and perfect CSI. At high interference levels
the performance of System B is close to the case of
perfect CSI. Clearly, as the interference decreases (E
becomes larger) System B approaches the performance
of System A.
Figure 6(b) shows the BER versus E for a MC-CDMA
system with a synchronization offset between the interfering BSs and the mobile of f I 0:5=T and nI 300.
With a synchronization offset the performance of System B
remains superior, especially for high interference levels
(E is low). Since, the receiver which utilizes antenna
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181

Figure 6. BER versus E@Eb/N0 10 dB for System A and

B with 2  1-D PACE for NR 1 and 2 receive antennas. Part
(a): fully synchronized system; part (b): large sync offset
(f I 0:5=T; I
between interfering BS and
n 300)
receiver.

diversity performs better at low E, this effect is more pronounced with NR 2. It appears that the interference
levels at pilot positions of System B are still lower than
for System A. Thus, the synchronization requirements
between two interfering BSs are not as strict as between
the transmitting BS and the mobile receiver. For instance,
on the link level the frequency offset between transmitter
and receiver should not exeed 25% of the subcarrier spacing [25]. On the other hand, the frequency offset between
two interfering BSs can be significantly higher than that,
without a degradation in performance.
Note, System B transmits zero subcarriers at a ratio of
2/25, due to the higher pilot reuse. This will result in
decreasing ICI and ISI in case of a synchronization offset,
compared to System A. This should be taken into account
when comparing System A and B.
Figure 7 compares the BER performance between
System A and B for a two antenna receiver, dependent
on the interferer frequency offset f I T. The time synchronization offset was set to zero. All other parameters
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G. AUER ET AL.

Figure 7. BER versus f I T for System A and B with NR 2

receive antennas. E 0 dB, Eb/N0 10 dB, I
n 0.

are the same as in the previous graph. The performance of

the receiver with perfect CSI slightly improves if the frequency offset is in the range 0:2=T 4 f I 4 0:6=T. In
this case, the interference is further randomized.
Generally, the receiver with perfect CSI has the same
performance for f I T f I  T , where  is an
integer. A slight difference occurs as pilot symbols are
transmitted at a larger power than the data symbols. This
is due to the fact that the system is not fully loaded, while
the pilots are transmitted with full power. This causes the
interference level to increase at data subcarriers in case of
a synchronization offset. On the other hand, at the same
time the interference at pilot subcarriers slightly decreases
due to the same reason. As in the considered case the ratio
of pilot to data symbols in one cell is 1=26 the difference
between f I T 0 and 1 is rather small. However, simulations with more pilot overhead have shown that the performance slightly degrades for the unsynchronized system.
The performance of System A is rather insensitive to
changes in f I . As expected the performance of System
B depends on the synchronization offset, since for
f I 0 and for f I 1=T the pilots experience no
and full interference, respectively. What is interesting, a
frequency synchronization offset for System B has little
effect on the BER as long as f I < 0:5=T. Only for large
frequency synchronization offsets f I > 0:5=T, the performance of System B approaches System A. The gap
between System A and B for large f I is due to the fact
that System B is allocated zero subcarriers.

6. CONCLUSIONS
The performance of the downlink of a celluar MC-CDMA
system with 2  1-D PACE has been analyzed.
Copyright # 2004 AEI

Particularly, the impact of a synchronization offset

between the interfering BSs and mobile receiver was taken
into account. As long as perfect synchronization between
the desired BS and the mobile receiver is maintained, a
synchronization offset between an interfering base station
and the mobile has little effect on the system performance.
Cell specific scrambling and interleaving, as well as,
spreading can decorrelate the cellular interference to a
great extent, such that cellular interference is observed
as white Gaussian noise. In particular, cell specific random
subcarrier interleaving has proven to be very effective.
Cellular interference causes only modest degradation on
the performance of the robust channel estimator, even if
the cellular interference for the pilots is not avoided, i.e.
pilot reuse of one. While a pilot reuse factor larger than
one can mitigate the interference of the pilot symbols, synchronization requirements of the cellular system are more
stringent.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank Eleftherios Karipidis currently at

the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Crete, Greece, for his support in implementing the simulation platform.

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AUTHORS BIOGRAPHIES
Gunther Auer received his Dipl.-Ing. Degree in Electrical Engineering from Universitat Ulm, Germany, in 1996, and his Ph.D. from
the University of Edinburgh, U.K., in 2000. From 2000 to 2001 he was a research and teaching assistant with Universitat Karlsruhe
(TH), Germany. Since 2001, he is a senior research engineer at NTT DoCoMo Euro-Labs, Munich, Germany. His research interests
include multi-carrier based communication systems, multiple access schemes and statistical signal processing, with an emphasis on
channel estimation and synchronization techniques.
Stephan Sand received his M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, U.S.A. and the
Dipl.-Ing. degree in communications technology from the University of Ulm, Germany, in 2001 and 2002 respectively. He is currently
working toward his Ph.D. at the Institute of Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen,
Germany. His main research interests include various aspects of mobile communications and signal processing, such as time-frequency methods for signal processing, space-time signal processing, MC-CDMA, channel estimation and multiuser detection.
Armin Dammann received his Dipl.-Ing. degree from the University of Ulm, Germany, in 1997. He is currently working toward his
Ph.D. at the Institute of Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.
Stefan Kaiser received his Dipl.-Ing. degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in
1993 and 1998 respectively. Since 1993, he is with the Institute of Communications and Navigation of the German Aerospace Center
(DLR) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, where he is currently head of the Mobile Radio Transmission Group. In 1998, he was a visiting
researcher at the Telecommunications Research Laboratories (TRLabs) in Edmonton, Canada, working in the area of wireless
Copyright # 2004 AEI

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G. AUER ET AL.

communications. His current research interests include multi-carrier communications, multiple access schemes and space time processing for mobile radio applications. Dr. Kaiser is co-organizer of the international workshop series on multi-carrier spread spectrum
(MC-SS), and he is co-author of the book Multi-Carrier and Spread Spectrum Systems (John Wiley & Sons, 2003) and co-editor of the
book series Multi-Carrier Spread Spectrum & Related Topics (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 20002004). He is also guest editor of
several special issues on multi-carrier spread spectrum of the European Transactions on Telecommunications (ETT). He is co-chair of
the IEEE ICC 2004 Communication Theory Symposium. Moreover, Dr. Kaiser is organizer and lecturer of the seminar series on Wireless LANs at the Carl-Cranz-Gesellschaft (CCG) in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. He is a senior member of the IEEE and member of
the VDE/ITG.

Copyright # 2004 AEI

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