TN 424: MULTI-CARRIER MODULATION

FROM MARCH -JUNE 2018

BY
Dr. KILAVO H
Email: sirkilavo@gmail.com
Mob: 0714247935
Room BG7
 MODULATION
 In electronics and telecommunications, modulation is
the process of varying one or more properties of a
periodic waveform, called the carrier signal, with a
modulating signal that typically contains information to
be transmitted.
 Most radio systems in the 20th century used frequency
modulation (FM) or amplitude modulation (AM) to
make the carrier carry the radio broadcast.

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 MODULATION
 In general telecommunications, modulation is the
process of conveying a message signal, for example a
digital bit stream or an analog audio signal, inside
another signal that can be physically transmitted.
 From there then we can
- Share the channel
-Transmit information

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 Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA)
 Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-
FDMA) is a promising technique for high data rate
uplink communication and has been adopted by 3GPP
for it next generation cellular system, called Long-Term
Evolution (LTE).
 SC-FDMA is a modified form of OFDM with similar
throughput performance and complexity.

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 Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA)
 SC-FDMA has drawn great attention as an attractive
alternative to OFDMA, especially in the uplink
communications where lower peak-to-average power
ratio (PAPR) greatly benefits the mobile terminal in
terms of transmit power efficiency and reduced cost of
the power amplifier.

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 Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA)
 The performance of SC-FDMA in relation to OFDMA
has been the subject of various studies.
 Although the performance gap is small, SC-FDMA's
advantage of low PAPR makes it desirable for uplink
wireless transmission in mobile communication
systems, where transmitter power efficiency is of
paramount importance.

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 Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA)
 This is often viewed as DFT-coded OFDM where time-
domain data symbols are transformed to frequency-
domain by a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) before
going through the standard OFDM modulation.
 Thus, SC-FDMA inherits all the advantages of OFDM
over other well-known techniques such as TDMA,
FDMA, OFDMA and CDMA.

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 Single Carrier Frequency Division
Multiple Access (SC-FDMA)
 The major problem in extending GSM, TDMA and
wideband CDMA to broadband systems is the increase
in complexity with the multipath signal reception.
 The main advantage of OFDM, as is for SC-FDMA, is
its robustness against multipath signal propagation,
which makes it suitable for broadband systems.
 SC-FDMA brings additional benefit of low peak-to-
average power ratio (PAPR) compared to OFDM
making it suitable for uplink transmission by user-
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terminals.
 OFDM
 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, is a form
of signal modulation that divides a high data rate
modulating stream placing them onto many slowly
modulated narrowband close-spaced subcarriers, and in
this way is less sensitive to frequency selective fading.

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OFDM

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 OFDM
 Second and third generation mobile systems are based
on either TDMA or CDMA technologies.
 Although these technologies can theoretically be
extended to next generation broadband wireless
systems, practical implementation issues and
complexities limit their acceptance.
 On the other hand, OFDM offers an easier solution and
practical implementation.

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 OFDM
 OFDM is a form of multicarrier modulation.
 An OFDM signal consists of a number of closely spaced
modulated carriers.
 When modulation of any form - voice, data, etc. is
applied to a carrier, then sidebands spread out either
side.
 It is necessary for a receiver to be able to receive the
whole signal to be able to successfully demodulate the
data.
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 OFDM
 As a result when signals are transmitted close to one
another they must be spaced so that the receiver can
separate them using a filter and there must be a guard
band between them.
 This is not the case with OFDM. Although the
sidebands from each carrier overlap, they can still be
received without the interference that might be expected
because they are orthogonal to each another.
 This is achieved by having the carrier spacing equal to
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the reciprocal of the symbol period.
 OFDM
 Multipath signal propagation makes the channel
response time dispersive;
 The amount of signal dispersion depends on the
environment of operation.
 For example, the channel dispersion is about 5 micro
seconds in typical urban areas and 15 to 20
microseconds in rural and hilly terrain.
 The factor that affects the receiver is the number of
resolvable channel taps over the channel dispersion
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 OFDM
 In a TDMA system, it is the ratio of the channel
dispersion to signal symbol time.
 However, in a CDMA system, it is the number of
channel taps with strong energy at chip-time resolution
over the channel dispersion period.
 The channel time dispersion is viewed as the frequency
selective or non-selective in the frequency domain.
 Frequency non-selective channel means the signal over
its entire bandwidth will have the same effect due to the
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 OFDM
 This is also called flat fading. In the time domain, the
channel is not dispersive relative to its symbol time, and
hence, there is no ISI.
 In the frequency selective channel, the signal will have
independent effects over its bandwidth due to the
channel, and it is time dispersive relative to its symbol
time.
 For narrowband TDMA systems such as GSM,
multipath propagation makes the channel frequency
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non-selective, making the receiver less complex.
 OFDM
 Extending TDMA techniques to broadband system
makes the receiver complexity unmanageable, as the
channel becomes very frequency selective.
 Another way to look at is that an OFDM symbol time is
much larger than the typical channel dispersion.
 Hence OFDM is inherently susceptible to channel
dispersion due to multipath propagation.
 One major difference between an OFDM and the
TDMA or CDMA techniques is important to note.
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 OFDM
 In traditional systems the symbol detection is on the
samples at either symbol or chip rate, and it cares about
the carrier-to-interference level only at the sampling
points.
 But, OFDM symbol detection requires that the entire
symbol duration be free of interference from its previous
symbols, a.k.a. inter-symbol interference.

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 OFDM
 Even though OFDM symbol duration is much larger
than channel dispersion, even a small amount of channel
dispersion causes some spilling of each OFDM symbol
to the next symbol, thus it causes some ISI.
 However this ISI spill-over is limited to only the initial
part of the neighboring symbol.
 Hence this ISI spill-over at the beginning of each
symbol can easily be removed by adding a cyclic prefix
to each transmit symbol.
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 OFDM
 Cyclic prefix is the process of extending each symbol by
duplicating a portion of the signal at the symbol ends,
which is thrown away at the receiver.
 The amount of symbol extension, i.e. length of cyclic
prefixes, is a system design parameter, and it is based on
the expected signal dispersion in the environment of
system operation.
 For example, the LTE system uses OFDM symbol of 66
microseconds plus 5 microseconds of cyclic prefix.
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 OFDM
 This means it is susceptible to maximum signal
dispersion of 5 microseconds due to multipath channel
propagation.

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 OFDM ADVANTAGE
 Resilience to interference: Interference appearing on a
channel may be bandwidth limited and in this way will
not affect all the sub-channels. This means that not all
the data is lost.
 Spectrum efficiency: Using close-spaced overlapping
sub-carriers, a significant OFDM advantage is that it
makes efficient use of the available spectrum.

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 OFDM ADVANTAGE
 Resilient to ISI: Another advantage of OFDM is that it
is very resilient to inter-symbol and inter-frame
interference. This results from the low data rate on each
of the sub-channels.
 Resilient to narrow-band effects: Using adequate
channel coding and interleaving it is possible to recover
symbols lost due to the frequency selectivity of the
channel and narrow band interference. Not all the data
is lost.
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 OFDM ADVANTAGE
 Simpler channel equalisation: One of the issues with
CDMA systems was the complexity of the channel
equalisation which had to be applied across the whole
channel. An advantage of OFDM is that using multiple
sub-channels, the channel equalization becomes much
simpler.

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 OFDM DISADVANTAGE
Whilst OFDM has been widely used, there are still a few
disadvantages to its use which need to be addressed when
considering its use.
 High peak to average power ratio: An OFDM signal
has a noise like amplitude variation and has a relatively
high large dynamic range, or peak to average power
ratio. This impacts the RF amplifier efficiency as the
amplifiers need to be linear and accommodate the large
amplitude variations and these factors mean the
amplifier cannot operate with a high efficiency level.25
 OFDM DISADVANTAGE
 Sensitive to carrier offset and drift: Another
disadvantage of OFDM is that is sensitive to carrier
frequency offset and drift. Single carrier systems are less
sensitive

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 OFDMA
 Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access
(OFDMA) is a multi-user version of the popular
orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)
digital modulation scheme. Multiple access is achieved
in OFDMA by assigning subsets of subcarriers to
individual users.
 This allows simultaneous low-data-rate transmission
from several users.

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OFDM VS OFDMA

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 OFDM VS OFDMA
 OFDM support multiple users (Multiple Access) via
TDMA basis only, while OFDMA support either on
TDMA or FDMA basis or both at the same time.
 OFDMA supports simultaneous low data rate
transmission from several users, but OFDM can only
support one user at given moment.

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 OFDM VS OFDMA
 Further improvement to OFDMA over OFDM
robustness to fading and interference since it can assign
subset of subcarrier per user by avoiding assigning bad
channels.
 OFDMA supports per channel or sub-carrier power
while OFDM needs to maintain the same power for all
sub-carriers.

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OFDMA VS SC-FDMA

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OFDMA VS SC-FDMA

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 SC-FDMA Modulation
 SC-FDMA is a new multiple access technique that
utilizes single carrier modulation, DFT spread
orthogonal frequency multiplexing, and frequency
domain equalization.
 It has a similar structure and performance as OFDM.
 SC-FDMA is currently adopted as the uplink multiple
access scheme for 3GPP LTE.
 Transmitter and receiver structure for SC-FDMA and
OFDM are given in Figures below.
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 SC-FDMA Modulation
 It is evident from the figures below that SC-FDMA
transceiver has similar structure as a typical OFDM
system except the addition of a new DFT block before
subcarrier mapping.
 Hence, SC-FDMA can be considered as an OFDM
system with a DFT mapper.

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 SC-FDMA Modulation

SC-FDMA Transmitter and Receiver

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SC-FDMA Modulation

OFDM Transmitter and Receiver

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 FDM & OFDM
 FDM stands for Frequency Division Multiplexing and
OFDM stands for Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing.
 OFDM sounds similar to the conventional frequency
division multiplexing (FDM), but OFDM differs from
conventional FDM in some important respects.

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FDM & OFDM

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 FDM & OFDM
 As shown in the figure in FDM systems carriers are far
apart with respect to each other and in OFDM systems
carriers are densely packed and are orthogonal to the
other carriers.
 Orthogonal means peak of one carrier occurs at null of
the other.
 Hence OFDM system is bandwidth efficient compare
to FDM system.
 In FDM system carriers are not orthogonal.
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 FDM & OFDM
 OFDM system usually will have more Peak to Average
Power ration i.e. PAPR compare to FDM system.
 PAPR can be reduced by use of scrambler module and
other techniques in OFDM systems.
 OFDM system provides higher data rate compare to
FDM system in the same bandwidth usage.
 FDM systems are used in radio, satellite
communications requiring good amount of guard bands
between adjacent frequency bands.
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 FDM & OFDM
 OFDM systems are used in wimax-16d/16e, wlan-
11g/11n and LTE technologies requiring higher data
rate and mainly used for broadband internet service.
 In OFDM systems multipath interference is more
compare to FDM systems but can be avoided/reduced
using high end algorithms such as cyclic prefix insertion
etc.

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 FDM & OFDM
 In FDM case entire bandwidth is used by
user/subscriber, while in OFDM bandwidth is divided
into many narrow band channels and each is allocated to
user/subscriber.
 Hence OFDM supports more subscribers/channels
compare to FDM.

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