International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )

ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 6 December 2013

1

ICI Cancellation Using Self ICI Symmetric
Conjugate Symbol Repetition for OFDM System
Rimpy Goyal
1
, Rishav Dewan
2

Student, Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, BGIET, Sangrur, India
1

Assistant Professor, Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, BGIET, Sangrur, India
2
rimpygoyal47@gmail.com


Abstract - A well known problem of orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) is its sensitivity to frequency
offset between the transmitted and received signals, which may
be caused by Doppler shift in the channel, or by the difference
between the transmitter and receiver local oscillator
frequencies. This carrier frequency offset causes loss of
orthogonality between sub-carriers and the signals transmitted
on each carrier are not independent of each other. The
orthogonality of the carriers is no longer maintained, which
results in inter-carrier interference (ICI). The proposed work
investigates an efficient ICI cancellation method termed
Repeated Correlative Coding scheme for combating the impact
of ICI on OFDM systems. Simulation results show that under
the condition of the same bandwidth efficiency and larger
frequency offsets, the proposed OFDM system using Self ICI
Symmetric Conjugate Repetition performs much better than
standard OFDM systems in AWGN channel with large Doppler
frequencies.

Keywords - ICI, OFDM, AWGN, Doppler shift, correlative
coding, symmetric conjugate, CIR.

I. INTRODUCTION
Wireless communications is an emerging field, which has
seen enormous growth in the last several years. The huge
uptake rate of mobile phone technology, Wireless Local
Area Networks (WLAN) and the exponential growth of the
Internet have resulted in an increased demand for new
methods of obtaining high capacity wireless networks. Most
WLAN systems currently use the IEEE 802.11b standard,
which provides a maximum data rate of 11Mbps. Newer
WLAN standards such as IEEE802.11a are based on OFDM
technology and provide a much higher data rate of 54 Mbps.
However systems of the near future will require WLANs
with data rates of greater than 100 Mbps, and so there is a
need to further improve the spectral efficiency and data
capacity of OFDM systems in WLAN applications. For
cellular mobile applications, we will see in the near
future a complete convergence of mobile phone
technology, computing, Internet access, and potentially
many multimedia applications such as video and high
quality audio. The goal of third and fourth generation mobile
networks is to provide users with a high data rate, and to
provide a wider range of services, such as voice
communications, videophones, and high speed Internet
access. The higher data rate of future mobile networks will
be achieved by increasing the amount of spectrum allocated
to the service and by improvements in the spectral
efficiency. OFDM is a potential candidate for the physical
layer of fourth generation mobile systems [1].
OFDM is a special case of multi-carrier modulation.
Multi-carrier modulation is the concept of splitting a signal
into a number of signals, modulating each of these new
signals to several frequency channels, and combining the
data received on the multiple channels at the receiver. In
OFDM, the multiple frequency channels, known as sub-
carriers, are orthogonal to each other. The basic block
diagram of the OFDM system in AWGN channel is depicted
in Fig. 1.


Fig. 1. The basic block diagram of an OFDM system in AWGN channel.
Interference caused by data symbols on adjacent sub-
carriers is referred to inter carrier interference (ICI). The
orthogonality of subcarriers can be viewed in either the time
domain or in frequency domain. From the time domain
perspective, each subcarrier is a sinusoid with an integer
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International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 6 December 2013


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number of cycles within one FFT interval. From the
frequency domain perspective, this corresponds to each
subcarrier having the maximum value at its own center
frequency and zero at the center frequency of each of the
other subcarriers. The orthogonality of a subcarrier with
respect to other subcarriers is lost if the subcarrier has
nonzero spectral value at other subcarrier frequencies. When
this happens, the Doppler shift on each multipath component
causes a frequency offset on the subcarriers, resulting in the
loss of orthogonality among them. Finally, any offset
between the subcarrier frequencies of the transmitter and
receiver also introduces ICI to an OFDM symbol [2].
Most types of noise present in radio communication
systems can be modeled accurately using Additive White
Gaussian Noise (AWGN). This noise has a uniform spectral
density (making it white), and a Gaussian distribution in
amplitude (this is also referred to as a normal
distribution). Thermal and electrical noise from
amplification, primarily have white Gaussian noise
properties, allowing them to be modeled accurately with
AWGN. Also most other noise sources have AWGN
properties due to the transmission being OFDM. OFDM
signals have a flat spectral density and a Gaussian amplitude
distribution provided that the number of carriers is large
(greater than about 20 subcarriers), because of this the inter-
cellular interference from other OFDM systems have
AWGN properties [3].
The problem of ISI in OFDM was first encountered and
mitigated by the scheme proposed by Peled et. al. [4].
Conventional null guard interval was substituted by cyclic
extension for fully-loaded OFDM modulation. As a result,
the Orthogonality among the subcarriers was guaranteed.
With the trade-off of the transmitting energy efficiency, the
scheme resulted in a phenomenal ISI reduction. Hence it has
been adopted by the current IEEE standards.
Later, Hirosaki et. al. [5] introduced an equalization
algorithm to suppress both inter symbol interference (ISI)
and ICI, which had resulted from a channel distortion,
synchronization error, or phase error. In the meantime,
Hirosaki also applied QAM modulation, pilot tone, and
trellis coding techniques in his high-speed OFDM system,
which operated in voice-band spectrum.
Y.Zhao et. al. [6] proposed an efficient ICI cancellation
method termed ICI self-cancellation scheme. The scheme
works in two very simple steps. At the transmitter side, one
data symbol is modulated onto a group of adjacent
subcarriers with a group of weighting coefficients. The
weighting coefficients are designed so that the ICI caused by
the channel frequency errors can be minimized. At the
receiver side, by linearly combining the received signals on
these subcarriers with proposed coefficients, the residual ICI
contained in the received signals can then be further
reduced.
Section 2 introduces the proposed work on the ICI
reduction using Repeated Correlative Coding. The
simulation results are discussed in Section 3. Finally, the
concluding remarks are presented in Section 4.

II. SYSTEM MODEL
The main disadvantage of OFDM, however, is its
susceptibility to small differences in frequency at the
transmitter and receiver, normally referred to as frequency
offset. This frequency offset can be caused by Doppler shift
due to relative motion between the transmitter and receiver,
or by differences between the frequencies of the local
oscillators at the transmitter and receiver [8]. In this project,
the frequency offset is modeled as a multiplicative factor
introduced in the channel, as shown in Fig.2.

Fig. 2. Frequency Offset Model
The received signal is given by
(1)
where is the normalized frequency offset, and is
given by fNTs. f is the frequency difference between
the transmitted and received carrier frequencies and Ts is the
subcarrier symbol period. w(n) is the AWGN introduced in
the channel. The effect of this frequency offset on the
received symbol stream can be understood by considering
the received symbol Y(k) on the k
th
sub-carrier.
(2
)
The ICI components are the interfering signals
transmitted on sub-carriers other than the kth coefficients are
given by
(3)
The required ICI coefficients are given as
(4)

(5)
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International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 6 December 2013


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CIR (carrier to interference ratio) is given by the ratio
of desired signal component to ICI coefficient.
(6)
The self cancellation method relies on the fact that the ICI
coefficients change gradually with respect to the subcarrier
index k; therefore, the difference between consecutive ICI
coefficients , is very small. . During
modulation, one data symbol is mapped onto two
consecutive subcarriers with predefined weighting
coefficients. The weighting coefficients are calculated
carefully such that the ICI signals within the successive
subcarriers are cancelled by each other at the receiver end;
hence this technique is called self-cancellation. In
improved technique, we observed that the difference
between a subcarrier and its symmetric subcarrier
is very small. Therefore, a
data pair is modulated onto two
subcarriers , where is a complex data and
is the negative conjugate of a. That means, the
transmitted symbols are constrained so that,




(7)

At the receiver side, we again take the conjugate of the
data symbol transmitted on symmetric at the receiver side,
we again take the conjugate of the data symbol transmitted
on symmetric (N-1-k)
th
subcarrier. The conjugate data
symbol is then subtracted from the k
th
subcarrier and divided
by two. This is expressed mathematically as

=

(8)
From the above equation, the ICI coefficient is denoted as

(
9)

The improved ICI self cancellation technique also
improves the system CIR. Using ICI coefficient given by
S(-k), the CIR of the improved ICI self-cancellation
scheme is given by




(10)
The algorithm of the proposed scheme is presented below.

Step 1 Generate binary data
Step 2 Perform QPSK modulation
Step 3 Serial to Parallel Conversion
Step 4 Generate subcarriers
Step 5 Perform IFFT
Step 6 Insert guard band
Step 7 Parallel to Serial conversion
Step 8 Apply AWGN channel model
Step 9 Apply Self-cancellation SCSR scheme
Step 10 Decode/Demodulate the data

III. SIMULATION RESULTS
The simulations were performed for the improved ICI
cancellation scheme and the same were compared with the
existing schemes and standard OFDM. Fig. 3 shows the
variation of CIR with respect to different frequency offsets.
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5
-20
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
NORMALISED FREQUENCY OFFSET
C
I
R

(
D
B
)
CIR vs Epsilon


proposed scheme
ICI self cancellation
standard ofdm

Fig. 3. CIR vs. frequency offset curves for standard OFDM, self-
cancellation system and improved self-cancellation Technique.
It can be observed that at frequency offset = 0.25, CIR of
standard system is approx. = 10 dB and that of ICI self-
cancellation and improved self-cancellation data conjugate
system are 30 dB, 50 dB respectively. Therefore it can be
concluded that CIR is improved by 4 times if we compare
standard and improved ICI self-cancellation system at
frequency offset =0.25.
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International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 6 December 2013


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Secondly, in order to observe the performance of the
proposed scheme in terms of BER, the simulations were
dome for different frequency offsets. Figs. 4,5,6,7 depict the
variation of BER (Bit Error Rate) with increase in SNR for
the proposed scheme. The comparison with standard OFDM
and self-cancellation technique is also presented for
frequency offsets of 0, 0.3, 0.35, and 0.4.



Fig. 4. BER of standard OFDM system and improved self-cancellation data
conjugate OFDM system at frequency offset = 0.



Fig. 5. BER of standard OFDM system and improved self-cancellation data
conjugate OFDM system at frequency offset = 0.3.

Fig. 6. BER of standard OFDM system and improved self-cancellation data
conjugate OFDM system at frequency offset = 0.35.

Fig. 7. BER of standard OFDM system and improved self-cancellation data
conjugate OFDM system at frequency offset = 0.4.
IV. CONCLUSION

The performance of OFDM system in the presence of
frequency offset has been studied in terms of the CIR and
the BER. ICI which results from the frequency offset
degrades the performance of the OFDM system. Improved
ICI self-cancellation technique is used here for the
mitigation of Inter carrier interference. Further the methods
used under ICI self-cancellation technique are data conjugate
and data symmetric conjugate method. The improved self-
cancellation scheme provides significant CIR improvement,
which has been studied theoretically and by simulations.
Under the condition of the same bandwidth efficiency and
larger frequency offsets, the improved OFDM system using
the ICI self-cancellation scheme performs much better than
standard OFDM systems. CIR is improved by 4 times if we
compare standard and improved ICI self-cancellation system
at frequency offset = 0.25.
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International Journal of Emerging Trends in Signal Processing( IJETSP )
ISSN(2319-9784) , Volume 1 , Issue 6 December 2013


5

There is a significant improvement in the bit error rate of
data symmetric conjugate method as compared to other
methods and standard system. Through simulations it has
been observed that bit error rate becomes zero at SNR =
8dB, 10dB, 16dB for frequency offset values 0.3, 0.35, 0.4
respectively using data symmetric conjugate method. It has
been observed that at frequency offset=0.4, the
performance of the data symmetric conjugate method is
improved up to 0.98 times as compared with the
standard OFDM system.
The proposed self-cancellation scheme can be extended to
MIMO-OFDM systems and a Bayesian Statespace
approach (SIS) to combat inter-carrier interference in OFDM
systems can be used. The sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)
method called sequential importance sampling (SIS) can be
implemented which requires very lower computational
complexity and estimates accurately high value frequency
offsets. However, the SIS performs slightly better, which is
expected due to the nonlinearity of the statespace and it is
bandwidth efficiency scheme.
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OFDM and MC-CDMA for broadband Multi-user
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[2]. R. kumar and pandey, Analysis and optimization
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Dec. 1999
[3]. J Armstrong., Analysis of new and existing
methods of reducing inter carrier Interference due
to carrier frequency offset in OFDM, IEEE Trans.
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Mar. 1999.
[4]. A. Peled and A. Ruiz, Frequency domain data
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[6]. Yuping Zhao and SvenGustav Haggman, Inter-
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Trans. Commun. Vol.49, no.7, July 2001.
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