OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing)

TASK
O To understand the basic concepts

involved in OFDM namely the Orthogonality of carriers, ISI , additive white Gaussian noise,use of IFFT and FFT etc. O To simulate a working model of OFDM transmitter and receiver in Matlab.

x(t)

What is OFDM? t

O OFDM is a combination of MODULATION

and MULTIPLEXING. O MODULATION- a mapping of the information on changes in the carrier phase, frequency or amplitude or combination. O MULTIPLEXING- method of sharing a bandwidth with other independent data channels. O OFDM is sometimes called multi-carrier or discrete multi-tone modulation.

ANALOGY FOR OFDM

O (a)- A regular FDM single carrier signal A

whole bunch of water coming all in one stream. O (b)- Orthogonal FDM- Same amount of water coming from a lot of small streams.

BASIC MEANING OF OFDM

O Orthogonal FDMs (OFDM) spread spectrum technique

distributes the data over a large number of carriers that are spaced apart at precise frequencies. This spacing provides the Orthogonality in this technique which prevents the demodulators from seeing frequencies other than their own.

FDM(Frequency Division Multiplexing)

O Frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is a form

of signal multiplexing which involves assigning non-overlapping frequency ranges to different signals or to each "user" of a medium.

ORTHOGONAL SIGNALS
O Two conditions must be considered for the

orthogonality between the subcarriers. O 1. Each subcarrier has exactly an integer number of cycles in the FFT interval. O 2. The number of cycles between adjacent subcarriers differs by exactly one.

BASIC DESIGN

TRANSMITTER
O RANDOM DATA GENERATOR: Using inbuilt Matlab functions like Rand and Randint a matrix of random data can be generated. As a NRZ encoder only takes 1 and 0 as input it is better to use randint(1,n) where n is the length of the serial input.

SERIES TO PARALLEL CONCEPTS

Series -In a conventional serial data system, the symbols
are transmitted sequentially, with the frequency spectrum of each data symbol allowed to occupy the entire available bandwidth. -When the data rate is sufficient high, several adjacent symbols may be completely distorted over frequency selective fading or multipath delay spread channel.

Parallel -The spectrum of an individual data element normally occupies only a small part of available bandwidth. -Because of dividing an entire channel bandwidth into many narrow sub bands, the frequency response over each individual sub channel is relatively flat. - A parallel data transmission system offers possibilities for alleviating this problem encountered with serial systems. - Resistance to frequency selective fading

DIFFERENTIAL MODULATION
O The process of mapping the information bits onto

the signal constellation plays a fundamental role in determining the properties of the modulation. O An OFDM signal consists of a sum of sub-carriers, each of which contains M-ary phase shift keyed (PSK) or quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM) signals.

QPSK(Quadrature Phase Shift Keying)

O In Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) two sinusoids

(sin and cos ) are taken as basis functions for modulation. Modulation is achieved by varying the phase of the basis functions depending on the message symbols. In QPSK, modulation is symbol based , where one symbol contains 2 bits. The following equation outlines QPSK modulation technique.

QPSK MODULATION
O

A QPSK modulator can be implemented as follows. A Demultiplexer (or serial to parallel converter) is used to separate odd and even bits from the generated information bits. Each of the odd bits (quadrature arm) and even bits (in-phase arm) are converted to NRZ format in a parallel manner. The signal on the in-phase arm is multiplied by cosine component and the signal on the quadrature arm is multiplied by sine component. QPSK modulated signal is obtained by adding the signal from both in-phase and quadrature arm.

QPSK DEMODULATION
O

In the demodulator the received signal is multiplied by a reference frequency generators (cos(t)) and (sin(t)) on separate arms (in-phase and quadrature arms). The multiplied output on each arm is integrated over one bit period using an integrator. A threshold detector makes a decision on each integrated bit based on a threshold. Finally the bits on the in-phase arm (even bits) and on the quadrature arm (odd bits) are remapped to form detected information stream. Detector for in-phase arm is shown below. For quadrature arm the below architecture remains same but sin(t) basis function must be used instead.

IFFT(Inverse Fast Fourier Transform)

O

An OFDM system treats the source symbols (e.g., the QPSK or QAM symbols that would be present in a single carrier system) at the transmitter as though they are in the frequencydomain. These symbols are used as the inputs to an IFFT block that brings the signal into the time-domain. The IFFT takes in N symbols at a time where N is the number of subcarriers in the system.

IFFT(contd.)
O

Since the input symbols are complex, the value of the symbol determines both the amplitude and phase of the sinusoid for that subcarrier. The IFFT output is the summation of all N sinusoids. Thus, the IFFT block provides a simple way to modulate data onto N orthogonal subcarriers. The block of N output samples from the IFFT make up a single OFDM symbol

FFT(Fast Fourier Transform)

O At the receiver, an FFT block is used to process

the received signal and bring it into the frequencydomain. Ideally, the FFT output will be the original symbols that were sent to the IFFT at the transmitter. When plotted in the complex plane, the FFT output samples will form a constellation.

AWGN(Additive White Gaussian Noise)

O

Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) is a channel model in which the only impairment to communication is a linear addition of wideband or white noise with a constant spectral density (expressed as watts per hertz of bandwidth) and a Gaussian distribution of amplitude. The AWGN channel is a good model for many satellite and deep space communication links. It is not a good model for most terrestrial links because of multipath, terrain blocking, interference, etc. However, for terrestrial path modelling, AWGN is commonly used to simulate background noise of the channel under study.

ISI(Inter Symbol Interference)

O

Two different sources of interference can be identified in the OFDM system. O A Intersymbol interference (ISI) is defined as the crosstalk between signals within the same sub-channel of consecutive FFT frames, which are separated in time by the signalling interval T. O A Inter-carrier interference (ICI) is the crosstalk between adjacent sub channels or frequency bands of the same FFT frame.

GUARD INTERVAL & CYCLIC EXTENSION

O OFDM symbol duration

CYCLIC EXTENSION
O For the purpose to eliminate the effect of ISI, the guard

interval could consist of no signals at all. O Guard interval (or cyclic extension) is used in OFDM systems to combat against multipath fading.

In that case, however, the problem of intercarrier interference (ICI) would arise. The reason is that there is no integer number of cycles difference between subcarriers within the FFT interval.

CYCLIC EXTENSION
O To eliminate ICI, the OFDM symbol is cyclically

extended in the guard interval. O This ensures that delayed replicas of the OFDM symbol always have an integer number of cycles within the FFT interval, as long as the delay is smaller than the guard interval.

RAYLEIGH FADING
O

In wireless telecommunications, multipath is the propagation phenomenon that results in radio signals reaching the receiving antenna by two or more paths. Causes of multipath include atmospheric ducting, ionospheric reflection and refraction, and reflection from water bodies and terrestrial objects such as mountains and buildings. O The effects of multipath include constructive and destructive interference, and phase shifting of the signal. This causes Rayleigh fading. The standard statistical model of this gives a distribution known as the Rayleigh distribution.

CONSTELLATION DIAGRAM
O

A constellation diagram is a representation of a signal modulated by a digital modulation scheme such as quadrature amplitude modulation or phase-shift keying. It displays the signal as a twodimensional scatter diagram in the complex plane at symbol sampling instants. In a more abstract sense, it represents the possible symbols that may be selected by a given modulation scheme as points in the complex plane. Measured constellation diagrams can be used to recognize the type of interference and distortion in a signal.

ADVANTAGES

DISADVANTAGES

REFERENCES
O 1) ANBAL LUIS INTINI, Orthogonal Frequency

Division Multiplexing for Wireless Networks, Standard IEEE 802.11a,2000. O 2)Charan Langton, Intuitive Guide to Principles of comunication,2004. O 3) Michael Speth, Student Member, IEEE, Stefan A. Fechtel, Member, IEEE, Gunnar Fock, and Heinrich Meyr, Fellow, IEEE, Optimum Receiver Design for Wireless Broad-Band Systems Using OFDMPart I,1999