48th International Symposium ELMAR-2006, 07-09 June 2006, Zadar, Croatia

Multicarrier Modulation in Advanced Wireless Communication Systems

D. Nogulic, M. Gadze, A. Jankovic

Mobile Networks
Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d., Krapinska 45, HR-10001 Zagreb
E-mail: dario. nogulic@,&ericsson.com

Abstract - The selection of appropriate multiple access tecnology is the main issue in design and development
of beyond 3G (B3G) wireless systems. This article considers Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) scheme as a key techinque to implement in next-generation mobile systems. The introduction of OFDM
multicarrier technique in new hybrid multiple access technologies should provide a solution for problems
limiting current mobile systems, such as sensitivity to multipath conditions, poor bandwidth efficiency,
interference and capacity issues, high signal processing complexity and inadequate performance ofhigh-speed
data transmission. The theoretical background, characteristics and practical applications of some of the most
important multiple access combinations will be reviewed. Finally, the implementation of OFDM in existing
single carrier 3G systems and coexistence will be shortly addressed in conclusion.
Keywords OFDM, MC-CDMA, B3G
-

1. INTRODUCTION modulations. OFDMA-based systems may be easier

Future generations of wireless systems are
expected to support ubiquitous communications,
regardless of environment encountered, while
maintaining the required QoS. Mobile
communication systems where modulation and
multiplexing schemes related to multicarrier
techniques have gained a lot of interest recently,
primarily Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM), predominantly because of
theirs superior performance in unpredictable
multipath environment, where interference and
frequency-selective fading can take place. The
advantages of OFDM systems come from division of
bandwidth on multiple orthogonal frequencies to
simultaneously transmit multiple signals in parallel.
Furthermore, as radio spectrum is primary but
limited resource for wireless technologies, the main
research is directed toward spectrally efficient
systems. Again, a promising solution to satisfy this
requirement is an OFDM-based system, which has
high spectral efficiency due to its orthogonal
subcarriers. OFDM's high spectral efficiency and
resistance to multipath make it an extremely suitable
technology to meet the demands of wireless packet
data traffic. Beyond 3G (B3G) wireless systems
should deliver much higher data transmission rates
and more diverse services than current 3G systems
can. The necessity to support high-capacity bursty
traffic in extremely unpredictable wireless channels
(higher mobile speeds, NLOS) poses a great
challenge to existing technologies based on CDMA.
Therefore, the design of future wireless air interface
has to take into account the fact that a dominant load
in wireless channels will be high-speed burst type
traffic. Finally, OFDM has reduced processing
complexity at high data rates compared to wideband
to implement since they don't require the higher
complexity of a RAKE receiver needed in CDMA. It
may also be simpler to implement equalization,
interference cancellation and adaptive antenna array
algorithms with OFDMA, where the algorithms are
done in the frequency domain.
OFDM can easily be combined with different
multiple access schemes, including frequency-
division multiple access (FDMA), time-division
multiple access (TDMA), and especially interesting
combination is with code-division multiple access
(CDMA).
2. OFDM BASICS
OFDM is a multicarrier transmission technique
which uses multiple frequencies to simultaneously
transmit several signals in parallel. Each signal has
its corresponding subcarrier which is modulated by
data. Since subcarrier frequencies are orthogonal
they can be very close or even overlap in frequency
domain, which results in high spectral efficiency of
this multiplexing technique. Fig. 1 shows the
simplified diagram of OFDM transmitter.
The original data stream with bit-rate R is divided
into N parallel bit streams each with much lower rate
Rs=l1Ts=RIN. Each substream is then mapped to
individual frequency subcarrier and modulated using
either PSK or QAM. In order to realize a practical
OFDM transmitter, modulation is performed through
discrete time signal processing and utilizing filtering
properties of inverse discrete Fourier transform
(IDFT). Each subcarrier in OFDM signal has a
narrow bandwidth and the symbol period Ts in such
low rate substreams is longer. The resulting signal is
having a high tolerance to multipath delay spread, as

175
 48th International Symposium ELMAR-2006, 07-09 June 2006, Zadar, Croatia
1 -to-N
dk
Fig. 1. OFDM System Transmitter
the delay spread has to be very long to cause
significant intersymbol interference (ISI). The
increased distance between symbols transmitted in
each multicarrier subsystem implies reduced ISI
value by factor N.
The receiver is composed of N parallel receiver
branches. It can be considered as set of
demodulators in which every subcarrier is integrated
over symbol period to recover original data. In
practice, in order to demodulate the signal at the
receiver side a DFT is used.
The influence of frequency selective fading in
multipath channel has to be considered. The time
delay between multipath components in such
channel is significant comparing to symbol period;
maximum delay spread is denoted as Tmax. If no
guard period between OFDM symbols is used, due
to multipath components, intersymbol interference
can occur. If guard period is used, where there is no
transmission during time tG>Tmax, ISI can be
completely eliminated. However, due to sudden
change in waveform in this case higher spectral
components arise and result in intersubcarrier
interference. The guard period insertion technique
with cyclic prefix is introduced to eliminate
intersubcarrier interference. OFDM symbol is
cyclically extended in the guard time. The useful
symbol length would be ts, and the symbol duration
is Ts= tS + tG
Mathematical expression for transmitting signal of
user k in OFDM system s(t) is given as:
+ N
s(t=E E c ej2;Tfk (t-iTs) f(t _iT)
i=-0 k=l
where Cki is i-th information symbol at the k-th
subcarrier, and f(t) is the pulse waveform of the
symbol [1]. When the rectangular pulse waveform is
used, f(t) is given by:
(t) {0 (t <-tG, t > tS '}
while subcarrier frequency fk and subcarrier
separation Af can be respectively written as:
176
N-to-1
C1i
C2i
s(t)
CNi
(k - 1)
= f =
(3)
ts ts
3. OFDM BASED MULTIPLE ACCESS
Digital audio broadcasting (DAB) and terrestrial
digital video broadcasting (DVB-T) are the first
main applications of OFDM scheme. Afterwards,
OFDM has been proposed and adopted in several
wireless communication systems.
The IEEE 802.1 la is a wireless local area network
standard (WLAN) which supports data transmission
rates up to 54 Mbps in 5 GHz band. It is based on
OFDM and Carrier-Sense Multiple Access with
Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA).
The IEEE 802.16a standard for metropolitan area
networks (WMAN) in 2 - 11 GHz band defines three
air interface specifications:
* WirelessMAN-SC using single carrier
modulation format,
* WirelessMAN-OFDM using OFDM with
256 subcarriers and TDMA multiple access,
* WirelessMAN-OFDMA using OFDMA
with 2048 subcarriers.
Two OFDM based air interfaces are preferred since
they are more suitable for NLOS operation.
WirelessMAN-OFDM with 256 carriers has lower
peak to average ratio, faster fast Fourier transform
calculation and less stringent requirements for
frequency synchronization. Out of 256 subcarriers,
192 are used for user data, 56 are nulled for guard
(1 band and 8 are used as pilot symbols. The
downstream data is time-division multiplexed. The
upstream time frame is time-division multiple
access.
In WirelessMAN-OFDMA the higher FFT space
(2048 subcarriers) is divided into subchannels. The
subchannel is a subset of multiple carriers.
Subchanneling concentrates the transmit power into
fewer OFDM carriers thus increasing the system
gain which can be used either to extend the reach of
(2) the system or to reduce the power consumption of
the user equipment. The carriers in one subchannel
are distributed over channel spectrum to minimize
the effect of frequency selective fading. The
subchannels are used in downstream to separate the
 48th International Symposium ELMAR-2006, 07-09 June 2006, Zadar, Croatia
data into logical channels, while in upstream the
channels are used for multiple access [4].
OFDM can also be combined with traditional
TDMA or CDMA thus forming a multiple access
method suitable for B3G systems. In OFDM-TDMA
the total bandwidth is allocated to one user during
several OFDM symbols. In contrast, OFDM-CDMA
assigns a subset of orthogonal codes to each user, so
information symbols can be spread in either the
frequency or time domain. Implementation of
OFDM-TDMA is interesting for B3G TDD systems
which will evolve from 3G networks designed for
time division duplex/multiple access operation with
synchronous CDMA technology (TD-SCDMA), a
3G standard being considered for deployment in
China [3].
3.1. MC-CDMA
A system that combines orthogonal multicarrier
modulation and CDMA is usually referred to as
OFDM-CDMA or MC-CDMA. MC-CDMA can be
described as a form of spread spectrum, where
spreading of original signal is performed using a
given spreading code in frequency domain. CDMA
serves for multiplexing, while selection of the signal
waveforms is based on OFDM principle. Signals to
different users are added linearly onto a multiplex of
Multi-Carrier CDMA signals, meaning that different
users are transmitting at the same set of sub-carriers
but with spreading codes that are orthogonal to the
codes of other users, Fig. 2. Provided that adequate
guard intervals, using cyclic prefixes, are used,
multi-path correction is easier and better than RAKE
combining in a single carrier system. This technique
provides frequency diversity. Best performance in
this environment is achieved through the use of
optimum combining in the receiver after
demodulation and despreading.
The original data sequence is first serial-to-parallel
converted into P parallel sequences (replicas of
original signal) and each of them is multiplied with
short spreading code to distinct between users. The
parallel sequences are converted back to serial
sequence and multiplied with long spreading code,
P-to- 1
1 -to-P
dj
Fig. 2. MC-CDMA System Transmitter
this time to separate different cells in downlink. The
spread data is mapped to N orthogonal subcarriers
through IDFT and finally guard period is inserted to
avoid ISI caused by multipath fading. Due to serial-
to-parallel conversion, symbol duration at subcarrier
level is P times longer than original symbol. This is
important to retain frequency nonselective fading
over each subcarrier. Otherwise, if the spreading was
implemented directly on the original data sequence,
the data rate could become too high and frequency
selective fading would appear. The basic transmitter
structure of an MC-CDMA scheme is similar to that
of an OFDM scheme. The main difference is that the
MC-CDMA scheme transmits the same symbol in
parallel through different subcarriers, whereas the
OFDM scheme transmits different symbols.
At the receiver side the signal is demodulated by
recovering Fourier coefficients in DFT and then
despread using long and short codes. The subcarrier
components obtained are distorted in channel and
affected by noise, so the next important step in
receiver is to apply appropriate matched filter
equalization. The aim of equalization is to reduce the
effect of the fading and the interference while not
enhancing the effect of the noise on the decision of
what data symbol was transmitted. The value of
equalization gain depends on the particular diversity
method used. Three frequency equalization
techniques are of a special interest: Equal Gain
Combining (EGC), Maximum Ratio Combining
(MRC), and Controlled Equalization (CE). With
EGC the gain correction removes the code structure
but does not try to equalize the effects of the channel
distortion in any way. The motivation behind MRC
is that the components of the received signal with
large amplitudes are likely to contain relatively less
noise. So, their effect on the decision process is
increased by squaring their amplitudes. While EGC
may be desirable for simplicity and MRC for
combating noise, neither of these techniques directly
address interference and significantly exploit the
coding of the subcarriers. With CE, an attempt at
restoring the orthogonality between users is made by
normalizing the amplitudes of the subcarriers. As the
orthogonality of the users is encoded in the phase of
Spreading=Guad s(t)
177
 48th International Symposium ELMAR-2006, 07-09 June 2006, Zadar, Croatia
the subcarriers, this method appears to be primarily
beneficial in the downlink where phase distortion for
all users may be more easily corrected rather than in
the uplink. The performance of each method is
estimated based on average BER. Fig. 3 gives a
general comparison of specified methods in terms of
BER [5]. MRC has a better performance for a very
low number of interferers (noise-limited channels),
whereas CE outperforms in interference-limited
channels. While not distorting the orthogonality
between users as with MRC and while not over
amplifying the noise as with CE, EGC performs best
at medium loads.
BER I characteristics. To minimize delays, short 0.5 ms
I e-02_
(3)
le-03
(2)
le-04 (1)
le-05
0 50 100
# of interferers
Fig. 3. Plots of BER vs. number of interferers for:
CE (1), EGC (2) and MRC (3); N=128 subcarriers
Multicarrier DS-CDMA (MC/DS-CDMA) has
also received much attention as a candidate multiple
access scheme for B3G systems. Unlike MC-CDMA
which performs spreading in the frequency domain,
MC/DS-CDMA transmitter spreads the S/P
converted data stream by using a given spreading
code in the time domain so that the resulting
spectrum of each subcarrier can satisfy the
orthogonality condition with the minimum
frequency separation. For the same reasons as in the
first scheme, code acquisition is eased and RAKE
combining is not needed. This sort of a combination
of MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA has advantages of
both schemes thus achieving high data rate
transmissions under severe fading channel.
3.2. OFDM Proposals for UTRAN
The objective of long-term evolution of 3GPP
radio-access technology is to ensure its
competitiveness even after HSDPA and Enhanced
Uplink are fully exploited, for the next decade and
beyond. In that sense, Evolved UTRAN
specifications [6] investigate the implementation of
OFDM scheme in 3G systems. Due to higher data
rates requested, it is required to include support for
wider transmission bandwidth, scalable from current
5MHz up to 20MHz. Depending on the spectrum
allocated, peak data rates expected are 100 Mbps in
downlink and 50 Mbps in downlink. According to
3GPP, there are six possible concepts being
evaluated for new physical layer:
178
* FDD UL based on Single-Carrier FDMA,
FDD DL based on OFDMA;
* FDD UL/DL based on OFDMA;
* FDD UL/DL based on MC-WCDMA;
* TDD UL based on SC-FDMA, TDD DL
based on OFDMA;
* TDD UL/DL based on OFDMA;
* TDD UL/DL based on MC-TD-SCDMA.
Among the mentioned concepts, downlink
transmission scheme based on conventional OFDM
is the most feasible one. The sub-carrier spacing of
15 kHz allows for operation in wide range of
environments with different propagation
frame duration has been selected. Using a short and
long cyclic prefix of 4.7 and 16.7 pts is sufficient for
handling the delay spread for both small and large
radius cells and amounts oftime dispersion. Channel
variations in the time domain are exploited through
link-adaptation and channel-dependent scheduling,
giving significant increase in spectral efficiency.
With the evolved radio access, adapting the
transmission parameters can be done not only in the
time domain but also in frequency domain.
Information about downlink channel quality is
obtained through feedback from terminals. Base
station allocates the downlink time and frequency
resources and dynamically selects appropriate data
rate by varying the output power level, the channel-
coding rate and modulation scheme.
However, interesting concept for downlink
transmission is also MC-WCDMA, as this structure
prioritizes spectrum compatibility, ability for legacy
UE and evolved UTRA UEs to co-exist in the same
spectrum allocation. By design, it is possible to
deploy the MC-WCDMA system in all existing and
future UTRA-FDD bands as well as new bands
designated for cellular systems.
For uplink transmission, power-efficient user
terminal transmission is necessary to maximize the
coverage. For this reason, SC-FDMA with dynamic
bandwidth is preferred. During each time interval,
the base station assigns terminals a unique frequency
for transmitting user data and ensuring intra-cell
orthogonality, thus avoiding intra-cell interference.
For the most part, time-domain scheduling is used to
separate users. Since terminals cannot continuously
transmit pilot signal over entire frequency domain,
frequency-domain adaptation is not used in uplink.
Therefore, slow power control is used to compensate
for pathloss and fading. Because of orthogonal
uplink transmissions, no fast power control is
required to handle the near-far problem. The
transmission parameters, such as coding and
modulation, are similar to those in downlink
transmission.
As for the implementation of OFDM in UTRAN, the
scenarios being studied are exclusively in the
context of high speed data services. New data
 48th International Symposium ELMAR-2006, 07-09 June 2006, Zadar, Croatia
services are supposed to be provided through the use
of a separate 5 MHz downlink carrier, supporting the
OFDM HS-DSCH transmission. Of course, when
there is a requirement for high bit rate traffic, the
HS-DSCH mode may be initiated using either the
WCDMA DL carrier (Release 5 HSDPA) or the
separate OFDM DL carrier.
To minimize the impact of the introduction of
OFDM in UTRAN and to ensure the coexistence of
OFDM with WCDMA in UTRAN, the OFDM
carriers should be spectrally compatible with current
WCDMA carriers. OFDM signal spectrum should be
shaped prior to transmission by using the windowing
and overlapping of consecutive OFDM symbols to
meet the UMTS spectrum emission mask. Other
coexistence and interworking issues include:
terminal support for E-UTRAN, UTRAN and
GERAN operation, measurements and handovers
between different radio access technologies, and
minimizing interruption time during handover for
different types of service, all primarily from network
performance and terminal complexity viewpoint.
4. CONCLUSION
The fact that OFDM is not a new emerging
technology but has already been applied in several
systems, and has well matured through research and
development for high-rate wireless LANs and digital
audio/video broadcasting, makes it very suitable
solution for application in future B3G mobile
communication systems.
By combining OFDM with CDMA, we can have
synergistic effects of multicarrier technique, such as
enhancement of robustness against frequency
selective fading encountered in mobile
communications and high scalability in possible data
transmission rate.
REFERENCES
[1] S. Hara, R. Prasad, Multicarrier Techniques for
4G Mobile Communications, Artech House,
Boston, 2003.
[2] R. Prasad, M. Ruggieri, Technology Trends in
Wireless Communications, Artech House,
Boston, 2003.
[3] A. Jamalipour et a/., "A Tutorial on Multiple
Access Technologies for Beyond 3G Mobile
Networks", IEEE Comm. Mag., Vol. 43, No. 2,
February 2005, pp. 110- 117
[4] A. Ghosh et a/., "Broadband Wireless Access
with WiMAX/802.16: Current Performance
Benchmarks and Future Potential", IEEE
Comm. Mag., Vol. 43, No. 2, February 2005,
pp. 129-136
[5] N. Yee, J. P. Linnartz and G. Fettweis, "Multi-
Carrier CDMA in Indoor Wireless Radio
Networks," Proceedings PIMRC '93,
Yokohama, Japan, September 1993, pp. 109-
113.
[6] 3GPP TSG RAN, "Physical Layer Aspects for
Evolved UTRA (Release 7)", 3GPP TS 25.814,
2005.
179