1.3 MIMO-OFDM for Wireless Communication Systems
1.3.2 OFDM Systems
The OFDM technology has become a popular transmission technique for signals over wireless channels. The origin of OFDM can be traced back to the Chang‟s paper [6] on the synthesis of bandlimited orthogonal signals for multichannel data transmission published in 1966. In the paper, a new concept of simultaneous transmission of signals over a bandlimited channel without the inter-channel interference (ICI) and the inter-symbol interference (ISI) was presented. A year later, performance analysis of effective signal transmission in parallel form was presented by Saltzburg [7]. Saltzburg concluded in his paper that in designing an effective parallel system, effort should be concentrated on reduction of crosstalk between adjacent channels rather than endeavoring to perfect the individual channels. Today, OFDM has become a widely accepted multi-carrier modulation method for signals transmission over wireless channels. Several wireless technologies and standards such as digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB), high-rate wireless LAN standard [14] such as the IEEE 802.11a [15], high-performance radio LAN type two (HIPERLAN/2) [16], multimedia mobile access communication (MMAC) [17, 18], and the IEEE 802.16a [19] metropolitan area network (MAN) standard, are all based on OFDM technique [20]. OFDM is also seen as a potential candidate for the future generation of the mobile wireless Systems, especially the fourth generation (4G) Systems [20, 32].
The OFDM concept is based on the splitting of data stream with a high-rate into a number of lower rate streams that are transmitted simultaneously over a number of subcarriers. Thus, there is an increase in symbol duration for the lower rate parallel subcarriers which in turn reduces the relative amount of dispersion, that is caused by multipath delay spread, in time. However, in a bid to completely eliminate the intersymbol interference (ISI), a guard time is introduced in every OFDM symbol. As such, OFDM technology is seen as a scheme that transforms a frequency selective fading channel to a set of parallel flat fading sub-channels. Consequently, the receiver structure is drastically simplified, and the time domain waveforms of the sub-carriers become
scheme where the subcarriers are non-overlapping, the signal frequency spectrum associated with different subcarriers overlap in frequency domain as shown in Figure 1.3. The introduction of guard band between the different carriers in the conventional FDM, in a bid to get rid of the interchannel interference, results in an inefficient use of the scarce and costly frequency spectrum resource. The overlapping of these subcarriers in the OFDM Systems makes possible efficient utilization of available bandwidth without causing the inter-carrier interference (ICI).
Direct implementation of OFDM Systems is computationally complex because of the large number of subcarriers involved which would require an equal number of sinusoidal oscillators for coherent demodulation. However, a breakthrough to the OFDM implementation came in 1971 when Weinstein and Ebert [21] proposed an effective way of implementing the scheme through the application of Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT), which drastically reduces the implementation complexity of the OFDM modems. This substantial reduction in implementation complexity was attributable to the simple realization that the DFT makes use of a set of harmonically related sinusoidal and cosinusoidal basis functions, whose frequency is an integer multiple of the lowest nonzero frequency of the set, which is referred to as the basis frequency.
(a)
(b)
Figure1.3 Comparison between (a) OFDM and (b) Conventional FDM
These harmonically related frequencies can therefore be used as the set of carriers required by the OFDM system. By employing a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), an efficient implementation of the DFT, the computational complexity of OFDM could further be reduced. Recent advances in very- large-scale-integration (VLSI) technology have, however, enabled the availability of economical, high-speed and large-size integrated circuits for the implementation of FFT and (Inverse Fast Fourier Transform) IFFT. The use of these IFFT and FFT methods for the implementation of both the OFDM transmitter and receiver respectively reduces the number of operation to Klog2K from K2, if DFT techniques are used instead, where K is the number of subcarriers [22].
1.3.2.1 Advantages and Disadvantages of OFDM Systems
The various advantages and disadvantages of OFDM Systems can be highlighted as follows [23, 24]:
Advantages of OFDM Systems:
i. OFDM has immunity to delay spread. Hence the scheme is an efficient way to deal with the problem of multipath.
ii. It has resistance to frequency selective fading because each of the subchannels in OFDM is almost flat fading.
iii. It exhibits efficient bandwidth usage, since the subchannels are kept orthogonal in the time domain but overlap in the frequency domain.
iv. The implementation of OFDM Systems is simple by using FFT (Fast Fourier Transform).
v. The system‟s receiver complexity is low because of absence of multi-taps equalizer/detector.
vi. OFDM possesses high flexibility in terms of link adaptation.
vii. OFDM is robust against narrowband interference, because such interference affects only a few numbers of the subcarriers.
Disadvantages of OFDM Systems:
i. The scheme is sensitive to frequency offsets (caused by frequency differences between the local oscillators in the transmitter and the receiver), timing errors and phase noise.
ii. It exhibits quite a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in comparison with single carrier system that seeks to lower the power efficiency of the Radio Frequency (RF) amplifier.