EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

A.1 An Introduction to OFDM

Topics:
A.1.1 Introduction
A.1.2 Principle of OFDM
A.1.3 Implementation of transreceivers

A.1.1 Introduction

One of the main reason to use OFDM is to increase robustness against
frequency-selective fading or narrowband interference

In a single-carrier system, a single fade or interferer can cause the entire link
to fail, but in a multi-carrier (MC) system, only a small percentage of the subcarriers (SCs) will be affected

The difference between the conventional non-overlapping MC technique and
overlapping MC technique is: we save almost 50% of the BW in the latter case

To realize this, however, we need to reduce cross-talk between SCs, which
means that we want orthogonality between the different modulated carriers

OFDM is a modulation scheme that is especially suited for high-data-rate
transmission in delay-dispersive environments

It converts a high data stream into a number of low-rate streams that are
transmitted over parallel, narrowband channels that can be easily equalized

OFDM dates back some 40 years; a patent was applied in mid 1960s by Chang
[1966]

Climini [1985] was the first to suggest OFDM for wireless communications

But it was only in the early 1990s that advances in hardware for DSP made
OFDM a realistic option for wireless systems

Currently OFDM is used for DAB, DVB, WLANs (IEEE 802.11a, IEEE
802.11g)
A.1.2 Principle of OFDM

OFDM splits the information into N parallel streams which are then
transmitted by modulating N distinct carriers (henceforth called SCs or tones)

Symbol duration on each SCs thus becomes larger by a factor of N

In order for the receiver to be able to separate signals carried by different SCs,
they have to be orthogonal

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

The SCs constitute an orthogonal (orthonormal, to be more precise) set

Given that the frequencies of the SCs satify fn=nW/N, i=1,2,,N and W is the
total available bandwidth

In most simple case, W=N/T

We further assume that modulation SCs is PAM with rectangular basis pulses

It follows that the SCs themselves satisfy the conditions of orthonormality
over the symbol period T, as the following series of manipulations of the cross
correlation of the exponential SCs shows

j ( 2 fn t )
1 T
1 T
j
(
2
f
t
)

e
dt = T e j ( 2 ( fk fn ) t ) dt
T 0 e
0
jT
1T
= cos( 2 ( f k fn ) t )dt + sin( 2 ( fk fn ) t )dt
T0
T0

sin( 2 ( fk fn ))
1

=
=
2 ( fk fn )
0

for all k = n
for all k n
Guard interval

Fig. A.1.1 FDMA (Guard interval)

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

Fig. A.1.2 OFDM (Carrier spacing W/N)

In order for the receiver to be able to separate signals carried by different SCs,
FDMA have large freq. spacing between carriers

This however wastes precious spectrum

A narrower spacing of SCs can be achieved in OFDM as shown in Fig. A.1.2

Let us assume modulation on each SCs is PAM with rectangular pulse shape
in time domain, the spectrum of each modulated carrier has sinc shape

The spectra of different modulated carriers overlap, but each carrier is in the
spectral nulls of all other carriers

Therefore, as long as the receiver does the appropriate demodulation
(multiplying by exp (-j2frt) and integrating over symbol duration), the data
streams of any SCs will not interfere
A.1.3 Implementation of transreceivers

OFDM can be implemented in two ways: one in analog interpretation, as
depicted in Fig. A.1.3

We first split our original data stream into N parallel sub-streams, each of
which has a lower data rate

We furthermore have a number of local oscillators available, each which
oscillates at a frequency fn=nW/N, where n=0,1,,N-1

Each of the parallel data streams then modulates one of the carriers

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

Ck ,0
e j 0

s (t )

Ck ,1

j 2

W
t
N

Ck , N 1
e

W
j 2 ( N 1) t
N

Fig. A.1.3. OFDM transmitter (analog)

This picture allows an easy understanding of the principle, but is ill-suited for
actual implementation the hardware effort of multiple local oscillators is too
high

s(t)

Hs(t)

OFDM transmitter

OFDM receiver

Channel
Fig. A.1.4 Analog OFDM transreceiver

C k ,0

Hs(t )

e j0
C k ,1

j 2

W
t
N

C k , N 1

W
j 2 ( N 1) t
N

Fig. A.1.5 OFDM receiver (analog)

An alternative implementation divides the transmit data into blocks of N
symbols

This block is subjected to an IFFT and then transmitted

This approach is much easier to implement using digital technology

In the following, we will show that the two techniques are equivalent

Let us first consider the analog interpretation

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

Let the complex transmit symbol at time instant i on the nth carrier be Cn,i

The transmit signal is then

N 1

s(t ) =
si ( t ) =
Cn ,i gn ( t iT )
i =
i = n = 0
where the basis pulse g (t) is a normalized frequency shifted rectangular pulse
n

1 j 2 nT
for 0 < t <T
g (t ) = e
n
T

0 otherwise

Let us know without loss of generality consider the signal only for i=0, and
sample it at the instances tk=kT/N

s (t ) =
k k

k
j 2 n
1 N 1
C e
N
T n = 0 n ,0

Now this is nothing but the IFFT of the transmit symbols

Therefore the transmitter can be realized by performing an IDFT

In almost all practical cases, the number of samples N is chosen to be a power
of 2, and the IDFT is realized as an IFFT

Note that input to this IFFT is made up of N samples (the symbols for the
different SCs)

And therefore the output from the IFFT also consists of N values

These N values now have to be transmitted, one after another, as temporal
samples, this is the reason why we have a P/S (parallel to serial) conversion
directly after the IFFT

At the receiver, we can reverse the process: sample the received signal, write a
block of N samples into a vector i.e., a S/P conversion and perform FFT on
this vector

The result is an estimate of the original data Cn

Analog implementation of OFDM would require multiple local oscillators
each of which has to operate with little phase noise and drift: in order to retain
orthogonality between the different SCs

This is usually not a practical solution

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

R. S. Kshetrimayum

The success of OFDM is based on fast digital implementation that allows an

implementation of the transreceivers that is much simpler and cheaper

In particular, highly efficient structures exist for the implementation of FFT (
so called butterfly structures, and computational effort (per bit) of
performing an FFT increases with log (N)

Ck ,0
s (t )

Ck ,1

Ck , N 1
(a)

C k ,0
Hs(t )
S/P

FFT

C k ,1

P/S

data
sink

C k ,N 1
(b)
Fig. A.1.5 OFDM (a) transmitter and (b) receiver using IFFT
References:

Ahmad R. S. Bahai, B. R. Saltzberg and M. Ergen, Multicarrier Digital
Communications Theory and Applications of OFDM, Springer 2004

R. Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Communication Systems, Artech House, 2004

A. F. Molisch, Wireless Communications, John Wiley & Sons, 2005

A. Goldsmith, Wireless Communications, Cambridge University Press, 2005

http://www.s3.kth.se/signal/grad/OFDM/URSIOFDM9808.htm

EC635 Advanced Topics in Communication Systems

Incomplete

R. S. Kshetrimayum