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OFDM FOR WIRLESS COMMUNICATION

ABSTRACT
This thesis investigates the effectiv eness of Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) as a m
odulation technique for
wireless radio
applications. The main aim was to
assess the suitability of OFDM as a
modulation technique for a fixed wire less phone system for rural areas of
Australia. However, its suita bility for m ore general wi reless applications is
also assessed. Most third generation mobile phone system s are proposing to
use Code Division Multiple Acce
ss (CDMA) as their m
odulation
technique.. It was found t hat OFDM perform s extremel y well compared
with CDMA, providing a very high tolerance to multipath delay spread, peak
power clipping, and channel noise. In addition to this it provi des a high
spectral efficiency. Orthogonal FDM' s (OFDM) spread spectrum technique
distributes the dat a over a lar ge numb er of carrier s that are spaced apart at
precise frequencies. This spacing prov
ides the "orthogonality" in this
technique, which prevents the dem odulators from seeing frequencies other
than their own. The benefits of
OFDM are high spectral effici
ency,
resiliency to RF interferen ce, and lower m ulti-path distortion. This is useful
because i n a typical terrestrial broa dcasting scenario there are multipathchannels (i.e. the trans mitted signal a rrives at the receiver using various
paths of different length). Since multiple versions of the signal interfere with
each other (inter sym bol interference (ISI)) it becomes very hard to extract
the original information. Orthogonal FDM deals with this multipath problem
by splitting carriers into sm aller sub ca rriers, and then broadcasting those
simultaneously. This reduces m
ultipath distortion and reduces RF
interference (a mathematical form ula is used to ensure the sub carrier
s'
specific frequencies are "orthogonal," or non-interfering, to each other),
allowing for greater throughput. The only m ain weak point t hat was found
with using OFDM, was that it is ve ry sensitive to fre quency, and phase
errors between the transmitter and receiver. The main sources of these errors
are frequency stability problem s; phase noise of the transm itter; an d any
frequency offset errors be tween the transmitter an d receiver. This problem
can be mostly overcome by synchronizing the clocks between the transmitter
and receiver, by designing the system appropriately

INDEX
Page No.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 2
2.1 WHAT IS OFDM

2.2 QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF OFDM

2.3 IMPORTANCE OF ORTHOGANILITY

10

2.4 MATHEMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF OFDM

11

2.5 IMPLEMENTATION OF OFDM

13

2.6 BLOCK DIAGRAM

21

CHAPTER 3: ADVANTAGES & DISADVANTAGES

CHAPTER 4: FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION
REFERENCE

22

Seminar Report -

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION
OFDM stands for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing and is an up
and coming modulation technique for transmitting large amounts of digital
data over a radio wave. W-OFDM stands for Wideband OFDM.
OFDM is conceptu ally sim ple, but the devil is in the details! The
implementation relies on very high speed digital signal processing. OFDM is
conceptually sim ple, but the devil is in the details! The im plementation
relies on very high speed digital signal processing and this has only recently
become available at a pr ice that m akes OFDM a competitive technology in
the market place. OK, so what is th e simple concept behind OFDM ? Take
one carrier and m odulate it using Quad rature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK)
where each sym bol encodes 2 bits. M odulation theory tells us that the
spectrum of such a m odulated signal w ill have a sin (x)/x shape with nulls
spaced by the bit rate. In OFDM, the ca rriers are spaced at the bit rate, so
that the carriers fit in the fit in the nulls of the other carriers. Another view of
Orthogonal Another view of Orthogonal is that each carrier has an integer
number of sine wave cycles in one bit period
The probl em with the sim ple-minded appr oach is that it ta kes lots of local
oscillators each locked to the others so that the frequencies are the exact
multiples that they should be. This is difficult and expensive. DSP to the
rescue! Each of the oscillators can be a digital representation of the sine
carrier wave that can be m odulated in the numerical dom ain. This can
happen sim ultaneously for all of the ca rriers. The resulting output of each
channel is added and then bl ocked. Si nce we have a representation of the
signal in the frequency domain but need to modulate an actual carrier in the
time domain, we just perform an Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) to
convert the block of frequenc y data to a block of ti me data that m odulates
the carrier . The receiver acquires the signal, digit izes it, and perform s an
FFT on it to get back to t he frequency domain. From there, it is relatively
easy to recover the modulation on each of the carriers.

CHAPTER 2
SUBJECT DETALING

2.1 WHAT IS OFDM

OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) is a method of using

many carrier waves instead of only one, and using each carrier wave for only
part of the message. OFDM is also called multicarriermodulation (MCM) or
DiscreteMulti-Tone (DMT). It is important to stress that OFDM is not really
a m odulation scheme sinc e it does not confli ct with other m odulation
schemes. It is m ore a coding sche me or a transportscheme. Orthogonal
Frequency Division is where t he spaci ng between carriers is equal to the
speed (bit rate) of the message.
A m ultiplex was prim arily used to allow many users to share a
communications medium like a phone trunk between two telephone central
offices. In OFDM, i t typical to assign all carriers to a single user; hence
multiplexing is not used with its generic meaning.
Orthogonal frequency division m ultiplexing is then the concept of typically
establishing a co mmunications link using a multitude of carriers each
carrying a n am ount of i nformation iden tical to the separation between the
carriers.
2.2 QUALITATIVE DESCRIPTION OF OFDM
Figure 0.4 shows structure of a multicarrier system.

th
Figure 0.4: Basic structure of a multicarrier system

e general

The original data stream of rate R is multiplexed into N parallel data streams
of rate

each of the data streams is modulated with a

different frequency and the resulting si gnals are transm itted together in the
same ban d. Correspondingly the recei ver consists of N parallel receiver
paths. Due to the prolonged distance in between transmitted symbols the ISI
for each sub system reduces
to

In the case of DVB-T we have

N= 8192 leading to an ISI of

Such little ISI can often be tolerated and no extra counter measure such as an
equalizer is needed. Alas as far as the co mplexity of a receiver is concerned
a system with 8192 paralle l paths still isn' t feasible. This asks for a slight
modification of the approach which leads us to the concept of OFDM.
In OFDM, each carrier is ort hogonal to all other carriers. However, thi s
condition is not always maintained in MCM. OFDM is an optimal version of
multicarrier transm ission. In OFDM, each carrier is orthogonal to all other
carriers. However, this condit ion is not always maintained in MCM. OFDM
is an optimal version of multicarrier transmission Schemes.

Fig. 3 The effect of adopting a multicarrier system. For a given overall data
rate, increasing the num ber of carriers reduces the data rate that each
individual carrier must conve y, and hence (for a given m odulation system)
lengthens the sym bol period. This m eans that the intersym bol interference
affects a smaller percentage of each symbol as the

In OFDM, the data is divided am

ong large number of cl osely spa ced
carriers. This accounts for the frequenc y division m ultiplex part of the
name. This is not a m ultiple access technique, since there is no com mon
medium to be shared
Instead of transm itting in serial way, da ta is transferred in a parallel way .
Only a small am ount of the data is carried on each carrier, and by this
lowering of the bit rate per carrier (not the total bit rate), the influence o f
intersymbol interfe rence is significan tly reduced. In principle, many
modulation schemes could be used to modulate the data at a low bit rate onto
each carrier.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing: A method for multiplexing
signals, which divides the available bandwidth into a series of frequencies
known as tones. Modulation on each tone is usually quardature amplitude
modulation. As shown in figure

Orthogonal tones do not interfere with each other because the bandwidth of
a modulated carrier sinc shape (sinx/x) with nulls spaced by the bit rate. In
OFDM, the carriers fit in the nulls of the other carriers.
.

All frequencies fade but the rapi d switching, frequency-hopping technique

is intended to all ow more robust data se rvice. Because of the orthogonal of
the signals, establish
overlap in frequency without interfe ring with each
other, thus reducing the system bandwidth
Ofdm frequency domaine shown in figure

SO OFDM can be simply defined as a form of multicarrier modulation

where its carrier spacing is carefully selected so that each subcarrier is
orthogonal to the other sub carriers

OFDM can be simply defined as a form of multicarrier modulation where its

carrier spacing is carefully selected so that each subcarrier is orthogonal to
the other sub carriers

2.3 The importance of orthogonality

The orthogonal part of the OFDM name indicates that there is a precise
mathematical relatio nship between th e frequencies of the carriers in the
system. In a normal FDM system, the many carriers are spaced apart in such
way that the signals can be recei
ved using conventio nal filters and
demodulators. In such receivers, guard bands have to be introduced between
the different carrier s and the lowering of the spectrum E fficiency. It is
possible, however, to arrange the carri ers in an OFDM signal so that the
sidebands of the individual carriers overlap and
the signals can still be
received without adjacent carrier interference. In order to do this the carriers
must be mathemati cally orthogonal. T he receiv er acts as a bank of
demodulators, translating each carrier down to DC, the resulting signal then
being integrated over sym bol period to recover the raw data. If the other
carriers all beat down to frequencies wh ich, in thtime domain, have a whole
number of cycles in the symbol period (t), then the integration process
results i n zero contributi on from all th ese carriers. Thus the carriers ar e
linearly independent (i.e. orthogonal) if the carrier spacing is a m ultiple of
1/t. Mathematically, suppose we have a set of signa ls y , where y p is the pth element in the set

10

2.4 Mathematical description of OFDM

After the qualitative description of the sy stem, it is valuable to discuss the
mathematical definition of the modulation system. This allows us to see how
the signal is generated and how rece iver m ust operate, and transm ission
channel. As noted above, OFDM tran smits a large num ber of narrowband
carriers, closely spaced in the frequency domain.
Mathematically, each carrier can be described as a complex wave:

The real signal is the real part of sc(t ). Both Ac (t) and sc(t), the am plitude
and phase of the carrier, can vary on a symbol by sym bol basis. The values
of the parameters are constant over the sym bol duration peri od t. OFDM
consists of many carriers. Thus the complex signals s (t)) is represented

This is of course a con tinuous signal. If we consider the wav eforms of each
component of the si gnal overcome sym bol period, then the variables Ac (t)
and fc(t) take on fixed values, wh
ich 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 sam ples. It is convenient to sam ple over the period of one data sym bol.
Thus we have a relationship=NT
If we now simplify eqn. 3, without a loss of generality by letting w0=0, then
the signal becomes:

Now Eq. 4 can be co mpared with the general form of the inverse Fourier
transform:
In eq. 4, the

is no m ore than a definition of the si gnal in the sampled frequency domain,

and s (kT) is the time domain representation. Eqns. 4 and 5 are equivalent if:

This is the same condition that was required for orthogonality

2.5 Implementation of ofdm

If ofdm is implemented through multicarrier system

Then the receiver and transmitter is as shown in figure

Above figures shows that generation of a number of carriers using separate

local oscillators. This was inefficient and costly (though increased the data
rate). . DSP to the rescue
2.6 The use of the FFT in OFDM
The main reason that the OFDM techni que has taken a long time to become
a prominence has been practical. It has been difficult to generate such signal,
and even harder to receive and demodulate the demodulators, was somewhat
impractical for use in the civil systems. The ability to define the signal in the
frequency domain, in soft ware onVLSI processors, and to generate the
signal using the inverse Fourier transform is the key to its current popularity.
The use o f the reverse process in the
receiver is essential if cheap and
reliable. Although the origi nal proposals were made a long time ago [5], it
has taken at the transm itter; the signal is defined in the frequency domain. It
is spectrum exists only at
discrete frequencies. Each
OFDM carrier
corresponds to one element of this discrete Fourier spectrum. The amplitudes
and phases of t he carriers depend on t he data to be transm itted. Th e data
transitions are synchronized at the carri ers, and can be processed together,
symbol by symbol
The definition of the (N-point) discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is:

13

and the (N-point) inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT):

A natural consequence of this method is that it allows us to generate carriers

that are orthogonal. The members of an orthogonal set are linearly
independent. Consider a data sequence (d0, d1, d2, , dN-1), where each
dn is a complex number dn=an+jbn. (an, bn=1 for QPSK, an, bn=1, 3 for
16QAM,)

Where fn=n/(NDT), tk=kDt and Dt is an arbitrarily chosen symbol duration

of the serial data sequence dn. The real part of the vector D has components

If these

components are applied to a low-pass filter at time intervals Dt, a

signal is obtained that closely approximates the frequency division
multiplexed signal

The inco ming seri al data is first converted form serial t

o parallel and
grouped into x bits each to form a co mplex number. The number determines
the signal constellation of the corresponding subcarrier, such as 16 QAM or

32QAM. The com plex num bers are modul ated i n the base band by the
inverse FFT (IFFT) and converted back to serial data for transm ission. A
guard interval is inserted between sy mbols to avoid intersymbol interference
(ISI) caused by m ultipath distortion. The discrete symbols are converted to
analog and low-pass filtered for RF up conversion. The receiver perform s
the inverse process of the transm itter. One-tap equalizer issued to correct
channel distortion. The tap-coefficients of the filter are calculated based on
the channel information.

Fig 4a shows the spe ctrum of an OFDM sub channel and Fig. 4b and Fig. 6
present compositeOFDM s pectrum. By car efully selecting the carrier
spacing, the OFDM signal spectrum can be made flat and the orthogonality
among the sub channels can be guaranteed.

If the signal is passed through a time-dispersive channel, by appending a

cyclic prefix at the front of every OFDM symbol. The cyclic prefix is a copy
of the last part of the OFDM symbol of length equal to or greater than the
maximum delay spread of the channel

15

2.7 Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

In practice, some of the carriers are used for channel estimation and there are
extra bits added for error detection and correction. Doing this is called
Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM). Coding is
now so common that many people drop the "C", as unnecessary, assuming
that coding is used.

16

17

18

2.8
When the radio signals travel fro
m one location t
o another, they
maybounceoffsurrounding objects (Figure 1), resulting in m ultiple paths
between transmitter and receiver. This is analogous to echoes or reflections
causing multiple copies of the message to arrive at the receiv er at different
times. The com bination of all Modulated message signal t o be distorted. A
simple example is where there are only two paths, the line of sight path and
reflected path from the ground. If message is sent at the right speed, then the
second (reflected) copy of t he Message may arrive exactly one bit t ime later
than the first (direct) copy. The Receiver will then receive two different bits
mixed together, thus distorting the Original message bit (Figure 1). Wireless

19

communication syst ems have to be

calledmultipath distortion.
Figure 1

designed t o cope with this so-

The main idea of usi

ng OFDM is to avoid
problems caused by
multipathreflections by sending the m essage bits slowly enough so that any
delayed copies (reflections) are late by only a small fraction of a bit time. To
maintain high bit rate, m ultiple carri ers are used to send many low speed
messages at the same tim e which can be co mbined at the receiver to make
up one high speed message. In this way, we avoid the distortion
caused by reflections.

2.8.2

ofdm act as a antinode for inter- symbol interference

20

2.9 BLOCK DIAGRAM OF OFDM

3.1 Advantages of OFDM

Spectral efficiency
{The orthogonal sub channels are spaced 1/T Hz apartandoverlap in
frequency)
Simple implementation
{IFFT/FFT pair
ADC/DAC pair)
Mitigation of ISI
{Cyclic prefix/suffix guard

interval)

3.2 The disadvantages of the OFDM

OFDM signal is contaminated by non-linear distortion of transmitter power
amplifier, because it is a combined amplitude-frequency modulation (it is
necessary to maintain linearity)
OFDM is very sensitive to carrier frequency offset caused by the jitter of
carrier wave and Doppler effect caused by moving of the mobile terminal.
At the receiver, it is very difficult to decide the starting time of the FFT symbolOFDM

stands for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing and is an up and

coming modulation technique for transmitting large amounts of digital data

over a radio wave
OFDM is currently a very popular choice for future wireless applications,
including wireless LANs, cellular and PCS data, and possibly 4G systems.
Hopefully, inexpensive products that provide high-speed communications to
individuals and appliances around the globe.

Conclusions
OFDM/COFDM has long been studie
d and im plemented to com bat
transmission channel impairments. Its applications have been extended from
high frequency radio comm unications to telephone networks, digital audio
broadcasting and terrestrial broadc
asting of digital television. The
advantages of COFDM, especially in the multipath propagation, interference
and fading environment, m ake the t echnology a prom ising alternative in
digital communications including mobile multimedia.

6.REFERENCE
[1] R. Prasad, An overview of millimetre waves for future personal wireless
communication systems,
Proc. IEEE First symposium. on communications and vehicular technology
in the Benelux, K3, Delft,
Netherlands, Oct. 27-28. 1993.
[2] Ministerie van Verkeer and Waterstaat, Hoofddirectie Telecommunicatie
en Post, Frequency
allocations in the Netherlands, 2nd edition, Groningen, 1993.
[3] R.W. Chang, Synthesis of Band-Limited Orthogonal Signals for
Multichannel Data Transmission,
Bell Syst. Tech. J., vol.45, pp. 1775-1796, Dec. 1966.
[4]B.R. Salzberg, Performance of an efficient parallel data transmission
system, IEEE Trans.
Commun. Technol., vol. COM-15, pp. 805-813, Dec. 1967.
[5]S.B. Weinstein and P.M. Ebert, Data transmission by frequency-division
multiplexing using the
discrete Fourier transform, IEEE Trans. Commun. Technol., vol. COM-19,
pp. 628-634, Oct. 1971.
[6]A.W.M. van den Enden and N.A.M. Verhoeckx, Discrete-time signal
processing: an introduction.
London: Prentice Hall Int., 1989., ISBN 0-13-216763-8
[7]A.V. Oppenheim and R.W. Schaffer, Discrete -time signal processing,
Prentice-Hall International,
1989., ISBN 0-13-216771-9