Arun OFDM

ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY
DIVISION MULTIPLPLEXING

SEMINAR REPORT
2004
Done by
Arun Mohan .V

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering

Government Engineering College
Thrissur

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing seminar 2004
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to thank everyone who helped to see this seminar to
completion. In particular, I would like to thank my seminar coordinator Mrs.
Muneera.C.R for her moral support and guidance to complete my seminar on
time. Also I would like to thank Mr. C. D. Anil Kumar for his invaluable help
and support.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Prof. Indiradevi, Head of
the Department, Electronics & Communication Engineering for her support and
encouragement.
I express my gratitude to all my friends and classmates for their support
and help in this seminar.
Last, but not the least I wish to express my gratitude to God almighty for
his abundant blessings without which this seminar would not have been
successful.

Department of ECE, 2 GEC Thrissur

ABSTRACT

Multi‐Carrier Modulation is a technique for data‐transmission by dividing
a high‐bit rate data stream is several parallel low bit‐rate data streams and using
these low bit‐rate data streams to modulate several carriers. Multi‐Carrier
Transmission has a lot of useful properties such as delay‐spread tolerance and
spectrum efficiency that encourage their use in untethered broadband
communications. OFDM is a multi‐carrier modulation technique with densely
spaced sub‐carriers that has gained a lot of popularity among the broadband
community in the last few years. It has found immense applications in
communication systems. This report is intended to provide a tutorial level
introduction to OFDM Modulation, its advantages and demerits, and some
applications of OFDM.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ..........................................................................…….3
1. HISTORY OF OFDM ………………………….………….....5
2. OFDM SYSTEM MODEL...................................................... 7
3. ADVANTAGES OF OFDM..................................................22
4. THE PEAK POWER PROBLEM IN OFDM.......................25
5. SYNCHRONIZATION IN OFDM SYSTEMS................. 30
6. MULTI‐CARRIER CDMA.....................................................33
7. APPLICATIONS OF OFDM................................................ 36
8. CONCLUSION .....................................................................41
REFERENCE .............................................................................42

1. HISTORY OF OFDM

The concept of using parallel data transmission by means of frequency
division multiplexing (FDM) was published in mid 60s. Some early
development can be traced back in the 50s. A U.S. patent was filled and issued
in January, 1970. The idea was to use parallel data streams and FDM with
overlapping sub channels to avoid the use of high speed equalization and to
combat impulsive noise, and multipath distortion as well as to fully use the
available bandwidth. The initial applications were in the military
communications. In the telecommunications field, the terms of discrete multi‐
tone (DMT), multichannel modulation and multicarrier modulation (MCM) are
widely used and sometimes they are interchangeable with OFDM. In OFDM,
each carrier is orthogonal to all other carriers. However, this condition is not
always maintained in MCM. OFDM is an optimal version of multicarrier
transmission
schemes.
Figure 1: comparison of band width between FDM and OFDM


For a large number of sub channels, the arrays of sinusoidal generators
and coherent demodulators required in a parallel system become unreasonably
expensive and complex. The receiver needs precise phasing of the demodulating
carriers and sampling times in order to keep crosstalk between sub channels
acceptable. Weinstein and Ebert applied the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to
parallel data transmission system as part of the modulation and demodulation
process. In addition to eliminating the banks of subcarrier oscillators and
coherent demodulators required by FDM, a completely digital implementation
could be built around special‐purpose hardware performing the fast Fourier
transform (FFT). Recent advances in VLSI technology enable making of high‐
speed chips that can perform large size FFT at affordable price.
In the 1980s, OFDM has been studied for high‐speed modems, digital mobile
communications and high‐density recording. One of the systems used a pilot
tone for stabilizing carrier and clock frequency control and trellis coding was
implemented. Various fast modems were developed for telephone networks.
In 1990s, OFDM has been exploited for wideband data communications
over mobile radio FM channels, high‐bit‐rate digital subscriber lines (HDSL, 1.6
Mb/s), asymmetric digital subscriber lines (ADSL, 1,536 Mb/s), very high‐speed
digital subscriber lines (VHDSL, 100 Mb/s), digital audio broadcasting (DAB)
and HDTV terrestrial broadcasting.

2. OFDM SYSTEM MODEL
2.1 INTRODUCTION
In older multi‐channel systems using FDM, the total available
bandwidth is divided into N non‐overlapping frequency sub‐channels. Each
sub‐channel is modulated with a separate symbol stream and the N sub‐
channels are frequency multiplexed. Even though the prevention of spectral
overlapping of sub‐carriers reduces (or eliminates) Inter channel Interference,
this leads to an inefficient use of spectrum. The guard bands on either side of
each sub‐channel are a waste of precious bandwidth. To overcome the problem
of bandwidth wastage, we can instead use N overlapping (but orthogonal) sub
carriers, each carrying a baud rate of 1/T and spaced 1/T apart. Because of the
frequency spacing selected, the sub‐carriers are all mathematically orthogonal to
each other. This permits the proper demodulation of the symbol streams
without the requirement of non overlapping spectra. Another way of specifying
the sub‐carrier orthogonality condition is to require that each sub‐carrier have
exactly integer number of cycles in the interval T. The idea in OFDM is to define
a symbol sequence in the frequency domain, transmit it in the time domain, and
map the received samples back into the frequency domain.
In high speed data transfer, Quality of service is an important criterion.
Therefore modulation techniques must be good enough for quality data transfer,
which modulation can compromise all contradicting requirements in the best
manner. Using adaptive equalization techniques at the receiver could be the
solution, but there are practical difficulties in operating this equalization in real‐
time at several Mb/s with compact, low‐cost hardware. A promising candidate
that eliminates a need for the complex equalizers is the OFDM. Here methods

generation, properties, merits and demerits of the technique are discussed.
It is an important feature of the OFDM system design that the bandwidth
occupied is greater than the correlation bandwidth of the fading channel. A
good understanding of the propagation statistics is needed to ensure that this
condition is met. Then, although some of the carriers are degraded by multipath
fading, the majority of the carriers should still be adequately received. OFDM
can effectively randomize burst errors caused by Rayleigh fading, which comes
from interleaving due to parallelization. So, instead of several adjacent symbols
being completely destroyed, many symbols are only slightly distorted. Because
of dividing an entire channel bandwidth into many narrow sub bands, the
frequency response over each individual subband is relatively flat. Since each
subchannel covers only a small fraction of the original bandwidth, equalization
is potentially simpler than in a serial data system. A simple equalization
algorithm can minimize mean‐square distortion on each subchannel, and the
implementation of differential encoding may make it possible to avoid
equalization altogether. This allows the precise reconstruction of majority of
them, even without forward error correction (FEC).

2.2 Mathematical description of OFDM

After the qualitative description of the system, it is valuable to discuss the
mathematical definition of the modulation system. This allows us to see how the
signal is generated and how receiver must operate, and it gives us a tool to
understand the effects of imperfections in the transmission channel. As noted
above, OFDM transmits a large number of narrowband carriers, closely spaced
in the frequency domain. In order to avoid a large number of modulators and

filters at the transmitter and complementary filters and demodulators at the
receiver, it is desirable to be able to use modern digital signal processing
techniques, such as fast Fourier transform (FFT).
Mathematically, each carrier can be described as a complex wave:

The real signal is the real part of sc (t). Both Ac (t) and fc(t), the amplitude and
phase of the carrier, can vary on a symbol by symbol basis. The values of the
parameters are constant over the symbol duration period t.

Figure 2: Single and multi bit channel spectrum
OFDM consists of many carriers. Thus the complex signals ss(t)is represented
by:

Where,

This is of course a continuous signal. If we consider the waveforms of
each component of the signal over one symbol period, then the variables Ac(t)
and fc(t) take on fixed values, which depend on the frequency of that particular
carrier, and so can be rewritten:

If the signal is sampled using a sampling frequency of 1/T, then the resulting
signal is represented by:

At this point, we have restricted the time over which we analyse the signal to N
samples. It is convenient to sample over the period of one data symbol. Thus we
have a relationship:

If we now simplify the equation for signal, without a loss of generality by letting
w0=0, then the signal becomes:

Now above eqn can be compared with the general form of the inverse Fourier
transform:
In simplified, the function is no more than a definition of the signal in
the sampled frequency domain, and s(kT) is the time domain representation.
Above eqns are equivalent if:

This is the condition that was required for orthogonality. Thus, one
consequence of maintaining orthogonality is that the OFDM signal can be
defined by using Fourier transform procedures.
The Fourier transform allows us to relate events in time domain to events
in frequency domain. There are several version of the Fourier transform, and the
choice of which one to use depends on the particular circumstances of the work.
The conventional transform relates to continuous signals which are not limited
to in either time or frequency domains. However, signal processing is made
easier if the signals are sampled. Sampling of signals with an infinite spectrum
leads to aliasing, and the processing of signals which are not time limited can
lead to problems with storage space. To avoid this, the majority of signal
processing uses a version of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The DFT is a
variant on the normal transform in which the signals are sampled in both time
and the frequency domains. By definition, the time waveform must repeat
continually, and this leads to a frequency spectrum that repeats continually in
the frequency domain. The Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is merely a rapid
mathematical method for computer applications of DFT. It is the availability of
this technique, and the technology that allows it to be implemented on
integrated circuits at a reasonable price, that has permitted OFDM to be
developed as far as it has. The process of transforming from the time domain
representation to the frequency domain representation uses the Fourier
transform itself, whereas the reverse process uses the inverse Fourier transform.

2.3 OFDM USING IDFT

The use of Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in the parallel transmission
of data using Frequency Division Multiplexing was investigated in 1971 by
Weinstein and Ebert. Consider a data sequence d0, d2… dN‐1,
Where each dn is a complex symbol. (The data sequence could be the
output of a complex digital modulator, such as QAM, PSK etc).Suppose we
perform an IDFT on the sequence 2dn (the factor 2 is used purely for scaling
purposes), we get a result of N complex numbers Sm (m = 0, 1…, N‐1) as:
Where, Ts represents the symbol interval of the original symbols. Passing
the real part of the symbol sequence represented by equation (2.1) thorough a
low‐pass filter with each symbol separated by a duration of Ts seconds, yields
the signal, Where, T is defined as NTs. The signal y (t) represents the base band
version of the OFDM signal.

Figure 3: OFDM modulator
It is easy to note from (2.3), that
1 The length of the OFDM signal is T.
2. The spacing between the carriers is equal to 1/T.
3. The OFDM symbol‐rate is N times the original baud rate.
4. There are N orthogonal sub‐carriers in the system.
The signal defined in equation (2.3) is the basic OFDM symbol.

Figure 4: Three sub carriers within an OFDM signal


Figure 5: Spectra of individual carriers

2.5 GUARD TIME AND CYCLIC EXTENSION

The main problem with reception of radio signals is fading caused by
multipath propagation. Also, there are intersymbol interference (ISI),
shadowing, and interference. This makes link quality vary. Further constraints
are limited bandwidth, low power consumption, network management and
multi‐cellular operation.
As a result of the multi‐path propagation, there are many reflected
signals, which arrive at the receiver at different times. Delayed signals are the
result of reflections from terrain features such as trees, hills or mountains, or
objects such as people, vehicles or buildings. These echoes cause ISI. Combined,
these signals can produce fading.

One of the main advantages of OFDM is its effectiveness against the
multi‐path delay spread frequently encountered in Mobile communication
channels. The reduction of the symbol rate by N times, results in a proportional
reduction of the relative multi‐path delay spread, relative to the symbol time. To
completely eliminate even the very small ISI that results, a guard time is
introduced for each OFDM symbol. The guard time must be chosen to be larger
than the expected delay spread, such that multi‐path components from one
symbol cannot interfere with the next symbol. If the guard time is left empty,
this may lead to inter‐carrier interference (ICI), since the carriers are no longer
orthogonal to each other. To avoid such a cross talk between sub‐carriers, the
OFDM symbol is cyclically extended in the guard time. This ensures that the
delayed replicas of the OFDM symbols always have an integer number of cycles
within the FFT interval as long as the multi‐path delay spread is less than the
guard time.
2.6 . RAISED COSINE WINDOWING
If the ODFM symbol were generated using equation (2.3), the power
spectral density of this signal would be similar to the one shown in Fig ( psd ).
The sharp‐phase transitions caused by phase modulation results in very large
side‐lobes in the PSD and the spectrum fall off rather slowly (as the sinc
function). If the number of sub‐carries were increased, the spectrum roll‐off will
be sharper in the beginning, but gets worse at frequencies a little further away
from the 3‐dB cut‐off frequency. To overcome this problem of slow spectrum
roll‐off, a windowing may be used to reduce the side‐lobe

The most commonly used window is the Raised Cosine Window, W (t)
Here Tr is the symbol interval which is chosen to be shorter than the
actual OFDM symbol duration, since the symbols are allowed to partially
overlap in the roll‐off region of the raised cosine window. Incorporating the
windowing effect, the OFDM symbol can now be represented as:
It must be noted that filtering can also be used as a substitute for
windowing, for tailoring the spectrum roll‐off. But windowing is preferred to
filtering because, it can be carefully controlled. With filtering, one must be
careful to avoid rippling effects in the roll‐off region of the OFDM symbol.
Rippling causes distortions in the OFDM symbol, which directly leads to less‐
delay spread tolerance.

2.7. OFDM GENERATION

Based on the previous discussions, the method for generating an ODFM
symbol is as follows.
¾ First, the N input complex symbols are padded with zeros to get Ns
symbols that are used to calculate the IFFT. The output of the IFFT is the
basic OFDM symbol.

¾ Based on the delay spread of the multi‐path channel, a specific guard‐
time must be chosen (say Tg ) . Number of samples corresponding to this
guard time must be taken from the beginning of the OFDM symbol and
appended at the end of the symbol. Likewise, the same number of samples
must be taken from the end of the OFDM symbol and must be inserted at the
beginning.
¾ The OFDM symbol must be multiplied with the raised cosine window to
remove the power of the out‐of‐band sub‐carriers.
¾ The windowed OFDM symbol is then added to the output of the previous
OFDM symbol with a delay of Tr, so that there is an overlap region of r T b
between each symbol.
Figure 6: OFDM transmitter and receiver
2.8 OFDM SYSTEM DESIGN

OFDM system design, as in any other system design, involves a lot of
tradeoff’s and conflicting requirements. The following are the most important
design parameters of an OFDM system. The following parameters could be a
part of a general OFDM system specification:

¾ Bit Rate required for the system.
¾ Bandwidth available.
¾ BER requirements. (Power efficiency).
¾ RMS delay spread of the channel.
Guard Time
Guard time in an OFDM system usually results in an SNR loss in an
OFDM system, since it carries no information. The choice of the guard time is
straightforward once the multi‐path delay spread is known. As a rule of thumb,
the guard time must be at least 2‐4 times the RMS delay spread of the multi‐path
channel. Further, higher‐order modulation schemes (like 32 or 64 QAM) are
more sensitive to ISI and ICI than simple schemes like QPSK. This factor must
also be taken into account while deciding on the guard‐time. Naturally, the
addition of the guard interval reduces the data capacity by an amount
dependent on its length. The concept of a guard interval could in principle be
applied to a single‐carrier system, but the loss of data capacity would normally
be prohibitive.
Each OFDM symbol is preceded by a periodic extension of the signal
itself. The total symbol duration is T Total=Tg+T, where Tg is the guard interval
and T is the useful symbol duration. When the guard interval is longer than the
channel impulse response or the multipath delay, the ISI can be eliminated.
However, the ICI, or in‐band fading, still exists. The ratio of the guard interval
to useful symbol duration is application‐dependent. Since the insertion of guard
interval will reduce data throughput, Tg is usually less than T/4. With a guard

interval included in the signal, the tolerance on timing the samples is
considerably more relaxed
Multipath distortion causes inter‐symbol interference, which occurs when
one signal overlaps with an adjacent signal. The information content of a
narrowband signal can be completely lost at the receiver if the multipath
distortion causes the frequency response to have a null at the transmission
frequency. The use of the multi‐carrier OFDM significantly reduces this
problem. OFDM signals typically have a time guard of 800 ns, however, which
provides good performance on channels having delay spreads up to 250 ns. This
is good enough for all but the harshest environments. Delay spread due to
multi‐path propagation is generally less than 50 ns in homes, 100 ns in offices,
and 300 ns in industrial environments.

Figure 7: time domain representation of guard band
Symbol Duration
To minimize the SNR loss due to the guard‐time, the symbol duration
must be set much larger than the guard time. But an increase in the symbol time
implies a corresponding increase in the number of sub‐carriers and thus an

increase in the system complexity. A practical design choice for the symbol time
is to be at least five times the guard time, which leads to an SNR loss that is
reasonable.
Number of Sub‐carriers
Once the symbol duration is determined, the number of sub‐carriers
required can be calculated by first calculating the sub‐carrier spacing which is
just the inverse of the symbol time (less the guard period). The number of sub‐
carriers is the available bandwidth divided by the sub‐carrier spacing. The
carriers are spaced by the reciprocal of the useful symbol duration. The number
of carriers corresponds to the number of complex points being processed in FFT.
For HDTV applications, the number of subcarriers is in the range of several
thousands, so as to accommodate the data rate and guard interval requirement.
Where N is the number of Sub carriers
Modulation and Coding Choices

The first step in deciding on the coding and modulation techniques is
determining the number of bits carried by an OFDM symbol. Then, a suitable
combination of modulation and coding techniques can be selected to fit the
input data rate into the OFDM symbols and, at the same time, satisfying the bit‐
error rate requirements. The choice of modulation and coding techniques are lot
easier now, since each channel is assumed to almost AWGN and one doesn’t
need to worry about the effects of multi‐path delay spread.

By using frequency and time diversity OFDM provides a means to
transmit data in a frequency selective channel. However, it does not suppress
fading itself. Depending on their position in the frequency domain, individual
subchannels could be affected by fading. This requires the use of channel coding
to further protect transmitted data. Among those channel techniques, trellis
coded modulation (TCM), combined with frequency and time interleaving is
considered the most effective means for a selective fading channel. TCM
combines coding and modulation to achieve a high coding gain without
affecting the bandwidth of the signal. In a TCM encoder, each symbol of n bits is
mapped into constellation of n+ 1 bit, using a set‐partitioning rule. This process
increases the constellation size and effectively adds additional redundancy to
the signal. A TCM code can be decoded with a soft decision Viterbi decoding
algorithm, which exploits the soft decision nature of the received signal. The
coding gain for a two dimensional TCM code over a Gaussian channel is about 3
dB for a bit error rate (BER)

It should be mentioned that one of the advantages of OFDM is that it can
convert a wideband frequency selective fading channel into a series of
narrowband and frequency non‐selective fading subchannels by using parallel
and multicarrier transmission. Coding OFDM subcarriers sequentially by using
specially designed TCM codes for frequency non‐selective fading channel is the
major reason for using the COFDM for terrestrial broadcasting. However, the
search of the best TCM code is still ongoing. Although trellis codes produce
improvements in the signal‐to‐noise ratio (S/N), they do not perform well with
impulsive or burst noise. In general, transmission errors have a strong
time/frequency correlation. Interleaving plays an essential role in channel
coding by providing diversity in the time domain. Interleaving breaks the

correlation and enables the decoder to eliminate local fading throughout the
band and over the whole depth of the time interleaving. Interleaving depth
should be enough to break long straight errors.
3. ADVANTAGES OF OFDM

OFDM possesses some inherent advantages for Wireless
Communications. This section glances on few of the most important reasons on
why OFDM is becoming more popular in the Wireless Industry today. OFDM
has been adopted in several wireless standards such as digital audio
broadcasting (DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB), the IEEE 802.11a local
area network (LAN) standard and the IEEE 802.16a Metropolitan area network
(MAN) standard. OFDM is also being pursued for dedicated short‐range
communications (DSRC) for road side to vehicle communications and as a
potential candidate for fourth‐generation (4G) mobile wireless systems.
3. 1. MULTI‐PATH DELAY SPREAD TOLERANCE

As discussed earlier, the increase in the symbol time of the OFDM
symbol by N times (N being the number of sub‐carriers), leads to a
corresponding increase in the effectiveness of OFDM against the ISI caused due
to multi‐path delay spread. Further, using the cyclic extension process and
proper design, one can completely eliminate ISI from the system. OFDM
exhibits lower multi‐path distortion (delay spread), since the high‐speed
compositeʹs sub‐signals are sent at lower data rates. Because of the lower data
rate transmissions, multi‐path‐based delays are not nearly as significant as they

would be with a single‐channel high‐rate system. For example, a narrowband
signal sent at a high rate over a single channel will likely experience greater
negative effects from delay spread because the transmitted symbols are closer
together
3.2 EFFECTIVENESS AGAINST CHANNEL DISTORTION

In addition to delay variations in the channel, the lack of amplitude
flatness in the frequency response of the channel also causes ISI in digital
communication systems. A typical example would be the twister‐pair used in
telephone lines. These transmission lines are used to handle voice calls and have
a poor frequency response when it comes to high frequency transmission. In
systems that use single‐carrier transmission, an equalizer might be required to
mitigate the effect of channel distortion. The complexity of the equalizer
depends upon the severity of the channel distortion and there are usually issues
such as equalizer non‐linearities and error propagation etc that cause additional
trouble.
In OFDM systems on the other hand, since the bandwidth of each sub‐
carrier is very small, the amplitude response over this narrow bandwidth will be
basically flat Even in the case of extreme amplitude distortion, an equalizer of
very simple structure will be enough to correct the distortion in each sub‐carrier.
3.3. THROUGHPUT MAXIMIZATION
The use of sub‐carrier modulation improves the flexibility of OFDM
to channel fading and distortion makes it possible for the system to transmit at
maximum possible capacity using a technique called channel loading. Suppose

the transmission channel has a fading notch in a certain frequency range
corresponding to a certain sub‐carrier. If we can detect the presence of this notch
by using channel estimation schemes and assuming that the notch doesn’t vary
fast enough compared to the symbol duration of the OFDM symbol, it can be
possible to change (scale down/up) the modulation and coding schemes for this
particular sub‐carrier (i.e. , increase their robustness against noise), so that
capacity as a whole is maximized over all the sub‐carriers. However, this
requires the data from channel‐estimation algorithms. In the case of single‐
carrier systems, nothing can be done against such fading notches. They must
somehow survive the distortion using error correction coding or equalizers.
3.4 ROBUSTNESS AGAINST IMPULSE NOISE

Impulse noise is usually a burst of interference caused usually caused in
channels such as the return path HFC twisted‐pair and wireless channels
affected by atmospheric phenomena such as lightning etc. It is common for the
length of the interference waveform to exceed the symbol duration of a typical
digital communication system. Usually complicated Reed‐Solomon codes in
conjunction with huge interleaves are used to correct this problem. OFDM
systems are inherently robust against impulse noise, since the symbol duration
of an OFDM signal is much larger than that of the corresponding single‐carrier
system and thus, it is less likely that impulse noise might cause (even single)
symbol errors. Thus, complicated error‐control coding and interleaving schemes
for handling burst‐type errors are not really required for OFDM Systems
simplifying the transceiver design.

4 THE PEAK POWER PROBLEM IN OFDM

One of the most serious problems with OFDM transmission is that, it
exhibits a high peak‐to‐average ratio. In other words, there is a problem of
extreme amplitude Excursions of the transmitted signal. The OFDM signal is
basically a sum of N complex Random variables, each of which can be
considered as a complex modulated signal at different frequencies. In some
cases, all the signal components can add up in phase and produce a large output
and in some cases, they may cancel each other producing zero output. Thus the
peak‐to‐average ratio (PAR) of the OFDM system is very large. The problem of
Peak‐To‐Average Ratio is more serious in the transmitter. In order to avoid
clipping of the transmitted waveform, the power‐amplifier at the transmitter
front end must have a wide linear range to include the peaks in the transmitted
waveform. Building power amplifiers with such wide linear ranges is a costly
affair. Further, this also results in high power consumption. The DAC’s and the
ADC’s must also have a wide range to avoid clipping. There has been a lot of
research put into the study of overcoming the PAR problem in OFDM . The
following sections discuss some of the most common and important of those
techniques as well as other issues.
4.1 POWER AMPLIFIER LINEARITY

Practical Power Amplifiers have an input power range over which they
have a linear transfer curve. Usually the linearity of non‐ideal power amplifiers
is measured using a term called the 1 dB compression point. It is defined as the

input power at which the output power of the amplifier is 1 dB less than the
output power obtained with an ideal amplifier.

Since a broadcast transmitter is a nonlinear device, clipping will always
happen for COFDM signal. However, clipping of a COFDM signal is similar to
the impulse interference on which COFDM systems have strong immunity.
Tests show that when clipping occurs at 0.1% of the time, the BER degradation
is only 0.1‐0.2 dB. Even at 1% of clipping, the degradation is 0.5‐0.6 dB.
However, the BER performance of COFDM system under nonlinear distortion
might not be the decisive factor. When clipping occurs, energy would spill into
the adjacent channels. More studies are required in this area. It has been
reported that, for an OFDM system, a 9 dB output back‐off causes negligible
BER degradation and adjacent channel interference. Another study indicated
that, for modern solid‐state transmitters, a prudent back‐off level would be
around 6 dB.
4.2 CLIPPING

One important feature of the peak‐to‐average ratio in the OFDM is the
fact that the percentage of symbols has a very large peak‐power is less. Thus in
this case, the simplest possible solution to the peak‐power problem would be
clipping, i.e., limiting the peak amplitude to some maximum level. Although
simple, this method has a few disadvantages. Clipping produces a kind of self‐
interference that causes some degradation in the BER performance. The non‐
linear distortion caused due to clipping increases the amount of out‐of‐band
radiation. The increase in the out‐of‐band radiation is basically because of the
fact that the clipping operation is a multiplication of the OFDM symbol with a

rectangular function that is if the amplitude is below a threshold and a smaller
value if the amplitude is above the threshold. This rectangular waveform
increases the out‐of‐band radiation, and as a result, the spectrum has a roll‐off
that is inversely proportional to the frequency.
The problem of slow spectrum roll‐off can be overcome to some extent,
by windowing the rectangular clipping waveform. Several windows are
proposed in literature. Some of the most common ones are Gaussian, Cosine,
Hamming, Kaiser etc. Simulation results show a slight degradation in BER with
clipping. When windowing is applied the BER performance is still worse, since
a large portion of the signal is affected by windowing than by clipping alone.
The required back‐off for the power amplifier can be determined by specifying
the amount of attenuation for the out‐of‐band spectral components, relative to
the in‐band spectral components. It has been shown that windowing offers a 3‐
dB gain in the required back‐off when compared to clipping alone.
4.3 ERROR‐CONTROL CODING

One of the problems with clipping is the degradation in BER. Specifically,
the symbols that have a large PAR ratio are vulnerable to errors. To reduce this
effect, forward error correction (FEC) can be applied across several OFDM
symbols. When FEC is applied, the errors caused due to large PAR in particular
symbols can be corrected by the surrounding symbols. The distribution of the
data over many carriers means that selective fading will cause some bits to be
received in error while others are received correctly. By using an error‐
correcting code, which adds extra bits at the transmitter, it is possible to correct
many or all of the bits that were incorrectly received. The information carried by

one of the degraded carriers is corrected, because other information, which is
related to it by the error‐correcting code, is transmitted in a different part of the
multiplex. This accounts for the “coded” part of the name COFDM.
4.4 PEAK CANCELLATION
Another method of removing the peaks in a OFDM signal is to subtract a
time‐shifted and scaled reference function such that each subtracted reference
function reduces the peak power of at least one signal sample. It is desirable to
choose a signal with approximately the same bandwidth as the transmitted
signal. The most commonly used peak‐canceling function is the sinc function
because of its desirable frequency‐domain properties. The sinc function can be
time‐limited by multiplying by a raised‐cosine window. It can be shown that the
peak cancellation technique will result in a lesser out of band interference than
the clipping and windowing techniques. A further advantage of the peak‐
cancellation technique is the fact that it can be digitally implemented, following
the IFFT in the transmitter.
4.5 PAR REDUCTION CODES

A more elegant solution to the PAR problem is the use of coding
techniques. The PAR can be reduced by using a code that only produces OFDM
symbols for which the PAR is below some desired level. The more the reduction
in the PAR, the smaller is the coding rate. It has been shown that it is possible to
construct codes with a code rate of ¾ that provides a maximum PAR of 3 dB.
Another interesting result in this direction is the fact that the correlation
properties of complementary sequence can translate into a relatively small PAP

ratio of 3‐dB when these codes are used to modulate an OFDM Symbol. All
these results have lead to the usage of Golay‐Complementary sequences for
generating these codes. Golay complementary sequences are sequence pairs for
which the sum of auto‐correlation function is zero for all delay shifts that are not
equal to zero. A lot of research papers have been published on the usage of
Golay Codes for OFDM transmission, that deal with the efficient generation of
these code and the optimal and sub‐optimal decoding and other interesting
properties. A Golay complementary pair is a pair fc; dg of binary sequences of
length n such that:
Ac (u) + Ad(u) = 0; u ≠ 0
Where
Ac (u) = ∑ (‐1)ci_ci+u is the aperiodic auto‐correlation function of c (in
which the summation is understood to be over only those integer values for
which both i and i+u lie within {0,1,2,……..}
4.6 SYMBOL SCRAMBLING TECHNIQUES

The basic idea of these techniques is that, for each OFDM symbol, the
input sequence is scrambled by a certain number of scrambling sequences. The
output signal with the smallest PAR is transmitted. If the PAR for one OFDM
symbol has a probability p of exceeding a certain level without scrambling, the
probability that it will exceed with scrambling (given a set of k scrambling
codes) is pk. Thus scrambling hopes to reduce the probability of occurrence of
high PARs, rather than reducing the levels of these PARs.

5 SYNCHRONIZATION IN OFDM SYSTEMS

Another important issue in OFDM transmission is synchronization. There
are basically three issues that must be addressed in synchronization. μ
¾ The receiver has to estimate the symbol boundaries and the optimal
timing instants that minimize the effects of inter‐carrier interference (ICI)
and inter‐symbol interference (ISI).

In an OFDM system, the sub‐carriers are exactly orthogonal only if the
transmitter and the receiver use exactly the same frequencies. Thus receiver has
to estimate and correct for the carrier frequency offset of the received signal
Further,the phase information must be recovered if coherent demodulation is
employed.
Another associated problem with OFDM systems is the effect of phase
noise. Phase noise is present in all practical oscillators and it manifests itself in
the form of random phase modulation of the carrier. Both phase‐noise and
frequency offset cause significant amount of ICI in an OFDM receiver. The effect
these are worse in OFDM than single carrier systems. The use of efficient
frequency and phase estimation schemes can help reduce these effects. Some of
the common methods used to achieve synchronization in OFDM systems are:



5.1 SYNCHRONIZATION USING CYCLIC EXTENSION

Since a Cyclic extension is added to every OFDM symbol, the first Tg
seconds of the OFDM symbol is identical to the last part. This property can be
exploited for both timing and frequency synchronization this scheme correlates
Tg seconds of the OFDM symbol with a part that is T seconds Delayed (T –
being the symbol time, less the guard period Tg). The output of the Correlator
can be written as:
The symbol timing is estimated from the correlation peaks at the output of
the correlator. The characteristics of the correlation peaks (in terms of the
correlation side‐lobe levels and the standard deviation of the correlation
magnitude) are better if the correlation is performed over a large number of
independent samples. Since the number of independent samples is proportional
to the number of sub‐carriers, this cyclic extension correlation method is
efficient only if a large number of sub‐carriers are present (more than 100). In
the case of less number of sub‐carriers, the side‐lobe to peak ratio of the
correlator output will be high and sometimes this might lead to wrong timing.
Once the timing is established using the correlation output, the frequency offset
can be directly estimated. The phase of the correlator output is equal to the
phase drift between samples that are T seconds apart. Hence the frequency
offset can be estimated as the Correlation phase divided by T p 2. The cyclic
extension technique is basically used for blind synchronization where it is not
possible to use a training sequence.

Figure 8: Synchronization using Cyclic Extension

5.2 SYNCHRONIZATION USING TRAINING SEQUENCES
In cases like packet data transmission in which a training sequence is
available, a much more efficient method of timing recovery is to correlate the
received signal with the known training sequence and to find the peaks in the
correlator output.Here T is the sampling interval and ci are the matched filter
coefficients, which are in turn, the complex conjugates of the known training
sequence. From the correlation peaks in the output signal, both the symbol
timing and the frequency offset can be estimated.
Figure 9 : Synchronization using Timing Sequences


5.3 OPTIMAL TIMING IN THE PRESENCE OF MULTI‐PATH

The effect of multi‐path is the introduction of ICI and ISI in the OFDM
symbol. These effects are significant only if the delay spread of the channel
exceeds the guard interval. ICI is caused mainly because the FFT interval is no
longer flat (because the roll‐off regions due the multi‐path components interfere
with the flat region of the FFT interval). ISI is caused mainly because of the
overlap between the previous OFDM symbol and the current OFDM symbol in
the FFT interval. The solution to this timing problem is to find the delay
window with a width equal to the guard time‐that contains the maximum signal
power. The optimal FFT starting time is then equal to the starting delay of the
found delay window, plus the delay that occurs between a matched filter peak
output from a single OFDM pulse and the delay of the last sample from the flat
part of the OFDM signal envelope, minus the length of the FFT interval.
6 MULTI‐CARRIER CDMA

Recently a new proposal for a system based on a combination of CDMA
and OFDM has gained increasing attention in the research community. This
system is called the Multi‐ Carrier CDMA (MC‐CDMA) system and it
combines the advantages offered by both OFDM and CDMA. Code‐Division
Multiple‐Access (CDMA). dominates amongst proposals for 3rd Generation
cellular communications systems Multi‐code CDMA is a very simple,
backwards‐compatible technique for supporting users who demand widely
varying data rates for different applications. In MC‐CDMA, a user who wishes
to transmit at a higher data rate is simply assigned additional orthogonal
transmission channels and appears to the base station as multiple users. The

abbreviation MC‐CDMA has been widely used for multi‐carrier CDMA, where
characteristics of OFDM and CDMA systems are combined and multi‐code
CDMA. Here we use it to abbreviate the latter.This section describes the basic
architecture and the advantages of this system:
6.1 SYSTEM MODEL

A MC‐CDMA transmitter spreads the data signal using a given spreading
code in the frequency domain. In other words, each chip of the signal is
transmitted over a separate sub‐carrier. The block diagram of a basic OFDM
transmitter is shown in following figure .In the MC‐CDMA transmitter, the
input data stream is first converted into a parallel symbol stream (of width P),
using a serial to parallel converter. Each data symbol is spread using a
spreading code K. All the data in total (K P ´), are now transmitted in parallel
using sub‐carrier modulation
Figure 10: MC‐CDMA transmitter

In the MC‐CDMA receiver, after down‐conversion, the K sub‐carrier
components Corresponding to the received users data is first coherently
detected with the DFT and Combined to yield the received data.

Figure 11: A Multi‐Carrier CDMA Receiver
6.2 ADVANTAGES OF MC‐CDMA
Combining OFDM with CDMA has a lot of advantages when compared
to using DSCDMA alone. Some of them are discussed in this section:
¾ The transmitted symbol duration is much larger than the chip duration of DS‐
CDMA; this makes the job of synchronization much easier.
¾ Provided there is an adequate guard interval provided, the multi‐path
correction in the form of RAKE combining is not necessary.
¾ The OFDM‐CDMA system provides inherent frequency diversity, since a single
Symbol is spread over a wide range of frequencies that may fade
independently and a diversity combiner can be used to improve the fading
performance of the system.

Finally, it must be noted that all these advantages are in addition, to what is
already offered by CDMA.
7 APPLICATIONS OF OFDM

A lot of applications that use OFDM technology have spawned over the
last few years. OFDM is the basis for the global standard for asymmetric
digital subscriber line (ADSL) and for digital audio broadcasting (DAB) in the
European market. In the wireless network space, OFDM is at the heart of
IEEE 802.11a and HiperLAN/2. The main difference in implementation is how
they perform convolutional encoding. In this section, one such application
will be described in detail, while an introduction to the other applications will
be provided.
7.1 DIGITAL AUDIO BROADCASTING (DAB)
DAB is an European standard for digital broadcasting that is intended to
replace the current analog technologies such as AM and FM. It was
standardized by the European Telecommunications Institute (ETSI) in 1995 .
DAB has got four transmission modes.

The DAB transmitted data consists of number of audio signals sampled at
a rate of 48 kHz with a 22‐bit resolution. This audio signal is then compressed at
rates ranging from 32 to 384 kbps, depending upon the desired signal quality.
The resulting digital data is then divided into frames of 24 Ms. DAB uses
differential QPSK modulation for the sub‐carriers. A null‐symbol (or a silence
period that is slightly greater than the OFDM symbol length) is used to indicate
the start of the frame. A reference OFDM symbol is then sent to serve as a
starting point for the differential decoding of the QPSK sub carriers. Differential
Modulation avoids the use of complicated phase‐recovery schemes. DAB uses a
rate ¼ convolutional codes with a constraint length of 7 for error‐correction. The
coding rate can also be increased using puncturing.
Interleaving is used to separate the coded bits in the frequency domain as
much as possible, which avoids large error bursts in the case of deep fades
affecting a group of sub‐carriers. DAB is designed to be a single frequency
network, in which the user receives, same Signals from several different
transmitters. This greatly enhances spectral efficiency. Even though there is a
delay in the reception of signals from different transmitters, this Situation can be
considered as a multi‐path situation and can be easily handled by selecting the
guard interval properly. Further, this can be considered a form of transmit
Diversity, that the DAB receiver can take advantage of.
7.2 DIGITAL VIDEO BROADCASTING (DVB)

Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) is a standard for broadcasting Digital
Television over satellites, cables and thorough terrestrial (wireless) transmission.

DVB was standardized by the ETSI in 1997. The following are some important
parameters of DVB:
¾ DVB has two modes of operation: the 2k mode with 1705 sub‐carriers and
the 8k Modes with 6817 sub‐carriers.
¾ DVB uses QPSK, 16‐QAM or 64‐QAM sub‐carrier modulation.
¾ DVB uses a Reed‐Solomon outer code (204, 188,t=8) and a inner
convolution code with generator polynomials (177,133 octal) combined
with two layers of interleaving for error‐control.

Pilot Sub‐carriers are used to obtain reference amplitudes and
phases for coherent demodulation. Two‐dimensional channel estimation is
performed using the pilot sub carriers, which aids in the reception of the OFDM
signal.

7.3 WIRELESS LANs
Wireless LANs are one of the most important applications of OFDM. A
lot of standards have been proposed for Wireless LANs during the past decade,
most of then based on spread‐spectrum schemes. In July 1998, IEEE Wireless
LAN standardization group IEEE 802.11 standardized a scheme based on
OFDM operating in the 5‐G Hz band. It is interesting to note that this standard
is one of the first packet‐based one to use OFDM. The parameters of this WLAN
standard are given in table(2)

One of the main reasons for using OFDM for Wireless LANs is relatively
small amount of delay spread encountered in such applications. In the case of
indoor environments, the delay spread is still much less and the efficiency of
OFDM in such environments is very high. In outdoor‐environments however,
directional antennas need to be employed if the same guard interval were used
(to reduce the effect of delay spread). The parallel‐form of transmission over
multiple subcarriers enables OFDM‐based WLANs to operate at higher
aggregate data rates, such as up to 54 Mbps with IEEE 802.11a‐compliant
implementations. In addition, interfering RF signals will only destroy the
portion of the OFDM transmitted signal related to the frequency of the
interfering signal.

7.4 Wide‐band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (W‐

OFDM):

W‐OFDM (Wi‐LAN U.S. patent number 5,282,222) is a variation of OFDM
that further improves its characteristics. Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing is a modulation method that, like all wireless transmission
schemes, encodes data onto a radio frequency (RF) signal. Conventional single
carrier transmission schemes like AM/FM (amplitude or frequency modulation)
send only one signal at a time using one radio frequency. OFDM sends multiple
high‐speed signals concurrently on different frequencies. This results in very
efficient use of bandwidth, and provides robust communications in the presence
of noise, intentional or unintentional interference, and reflected signals that
degrade radio communications. The signal reception is corrected for distortions,
allowing greater transmission speeds.
W‐OFDM also further processes the signal to maximize the range. Wi‐
LAN holds fundamental patents on W‐OFDM and is pioneering the
development of large‐scale, high data rate W‐OFDM systems. The efficiency
and noise tolerance of W‐OFDM allow the best of both spread‐spectrum and
narrow band systems to be united. These combinations, and our established
data networking protocols, further extend the capabilities of W‐OFDM into
realm of practical multipoint networks. W‐OFDM effectively permits several
independent channels to operate within the same band, allowing multipoint
networks and point‐to‐point backbone systems to be overlaid on one another in
the same frequency band.

CONCLUSION

OFDM has several interesting properties such as noise reduction,
advanced multiple access capabilities and high rate of data transfer capabilities
suits its use over Wireless channels and hence many Wireless standards have
started to use OFDM for modulation and multiple accesses. The various methods of
generation and demodulation of OFDM and specific issues such as linearity and
synchronization were analyzed. Application of OFDM such MC‐CDMA, DAB,
DVB , WLAN etc, were also discussed in detail.

REFERENCE:
1.Richard Van Nee, Ramjee Prasad, “OFDM for Wireless Multimedia
Communications”, Artech House Publishers.
2. Ahmad R. S. Bahai, Burton R. Saltzberg, “Multi‐Carrier Digital
Communications – Theory and Applications of OFDM”, Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishers.
3. May T., Rohling H, “Reducing the Peak to Average Power Ratio of OFDM
Radio Transmission Systems”, Proceedings of IEEE VTC ’98, Ottawa, Canada, pp.
2474‐ 2478, May 18‐21, 1998.
4. Li X., Cimini L. J., “Effects of Clipping and Filtering on the performance of
OFDM”, Proceedings of IEEE VTC ’97, pp. 1634‐1638, 1997.
5. Davis J. A., and Jedwab J., “Peak‐to‐Mean Power Control and Error
Correction for OFDM Transmission Using Golay Sequences and Reed‐Muller
Codes”, Electronics Letters, Vol. 33, pp. 267‐268, 1997.
6. ETSI, “Digital Video Broadcasting: Framing Structure, Channel Coding and
Modulation for Digital Terrestrial Television”, European Telecommunication
Standard, EN 300‐744, Aug 1997.
7. Justin Chuang, Nelson Sollenberger, “Beyond 3G: Wireless Wideband Data
Access based on OFDM and Dynamic Packet Assignment”, IEEE
Communications Magazine, pp. 78‐87, July 2000.

Arun OFDM

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ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY

Department of ECE, 2 GEC Thrissur

spectrum efficiency that encourage their use in untethered broadband

communications. OFDM is a multi‐carrier modulation technique with densely

Department of ECE, 3 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 4 GEC Thrissur

available bandwidth. The initial applications were in the military

Department of ECE, 5 GEC Thrissur

coherent demodulators required by FDM, a completely digital implementation

Department of ECE, 6 GEC Thrissur

2. OFDM SYSTEM MODEL

In older multi‐channel systems using FDM, the total available

bandwidth is divided into N non‐overlapping frequency sub‐channels. Each

overlapping of sub‐carriers reduces (or eliminates) Inter channel Interference,

Department of ECE, 7 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 8 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 9 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 10 GEC Thrissur

representation to the frequency domain representation uses the Fourier

Department of ECE, 11 GEC Thrissur

low‐pass filter with each symbol separated by a duration of Ts seconds, yields

Department of ECE, 12 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 13 GEC Thrissur

multipath propagation. Also, there are intersymbol interference (ISI),

are limited bandwidth, low power consumption, network management and

Department of ECE, 14 GEC Thrissur

multi‐path delay spread frequently encountered in Mobile communication

Department of ECE, 15 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 16 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 17 GEC Thrissur

OFDM system, since it carries no information. The choice of the guard time is

Department of ECE, 18 GEC Thrissur

multi‐path propagation is generally less than 50 ns in homes, 100 ns in offices,

Department of ECE, 19 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 20 GEC Thrissur

convert a wideband frequency selective fading channel into a series of

narrowband and frequency non‐selective fading subchannels by using parallel

time/frequency correlation. Interleaving plays an essential role in channel

Department of ECE, 21 GEC Thrissur

OFDM possesses some inherent advantages for Wireless

why OFDM is becoming more popular in the Wireless Industry today. OFDM

exhibits lower multi‐path distortion (delay spread), since the high‐speed

Department of ECE, 22 GEC Thrissur

would be with a single‐channel high‐rate system. For example, a narrowband

Department of ECE, 23 GEC Thrissur

digital communication system. Usually complicated Reed‐Solomon codes in

Department of ECE, 24 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 25 GEC Thrissur

Since a broadcast transmitter is a nonlinear device, clipping will always

BER degradation and adjacent channel interference. Another study indicated

Department of ECE, 26 GEC Thrissur

by windowing the rectangular clipping waveform. Several windows are

Department of ECE, 27 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 28 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 29 GEC Thrissur

5 SYNCHRONIZATION IN OFDM SYSTEMS

Department of ECE, 30 GEC Thrissur

Department of ECE, 31 GEC Thrissur

received signal with the known training sequence and to find the peaks in the

Department of ECE, 32 GEC Thrissur

Multiple‐Access (CDMA). dominates amongst proposals for 3rd Generation

cellular communications systems Multi‐code CDMA is a very simple,