Minimum frequency spacing for having orthogonal sine waves

The objective of this section is to figure out the minimum separation between two sine
waves having the frequencies , , of duration each to be orthogonal. Let the phase
difference between the sine waves be where can take any value from .

For the two sine waves to be orthogonal,

Integrating and applying the limits, the above equation simplifies to

Note: and where is an integer.

Let us assume that is an integer. Then two terms in the above equation
become and .

The above equation simplifies to:

Case 1: for an arbitrary value of from to

In such a case, for the above equation to be zero, then

- the cosine term needs to be equal to 1

- the sine term needs to be equal to 0

To satisfy that requirement, need to have:

Of course, the minimum value of is 1, then:

 Case 2: for

When , then cosine term in the equation is already zero.

To make the eqution 0, the sine term needs to be equal zero. To satisfy that requirement,
need to have:

Of course, the minimum value of is 1, then

Generate two orthogonal sine waves with minimum frequency separation and the
following parameters:

Parameter Value
1s
100 Hz
(0,1) s

Choose the adequate frequencies:

- for an arbitrary
- for

For each case, plot the signals on the same plot and check their orthogonality. Draw some
conclusions.
 Figure: Two sine waves with frequency difference

Figure: Two sine waves with frequency difference

Summary

1. When the phase difference between two sine waves is not known, then the minimum
frequency separation between them is for the sine waves to be orthogonal.

2. When the phase difference between two sine waves is zero, then the minimum

frequency separation between them is for the sine waves to be orthogonal.

3. In the Matlab code requirements, with separation, the correlation of the two sine
waves is only nearly equal to zero (and not zero). Why?
Understanding an OFDM transmission

Let us try to understand simulation of a typical Orthogonal Frequency Division

Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission defined per IEEE 802.11a specification.

Orthogonal pulses

In the previous section, we have understood that the minimum frequency separation for
two sine waves with arbitrary phases to be orthogonal is , where is the symbol period.

In Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, multiple sine waves with frequency a

separation are used. The sine waves used in OFDM can be defined as:

where corresponds to the frequency of the sine waves and

is a rectangular window over .

Using of inverse Fourier Transform

We now have understood that OFDM uses multiple sine waves having frequency
separation where each sine wave gets modulated by independent information. The information
is multiplied by the corresponding carrier and the sum of such modulated sine waves
forms the transmit signal. Mathematically, the transmit signal is:

The interpretation of the above equation is as follows:

(a) Each information signal multiplies the sine wave having frequency of
(b) Sum of all such modulated sine waves are added and the resultant signal is sent out as

The sampled version of the above equation is:

 It is reasonable to understand that above operation corresponds to an inverse Discrete Fourier
Transform (IDFT) operation.

Understanding of an OFDM transmission specified per IEEE 802.11a

From the IEEE 802.11a specifications, the symbol duration is .

This implies that the used subcarriers are and so on.

The available bandwidth of 20MHz is split into 64 subcarriers. Out of the available 64
subcarriers having the indices , the number of used subcarriers is 52. The used
subcarriers are having indices from are used for transmitting
information sequence to .

Once the bits in each symbol are assigned to appropriate IDFT inputs, the IDFT operation is
performed to obtain the time domain signal.

For each symbol, some samples from the end are appended to the beginning of the symbol
(referred to as cyclic prefix insertion). We will discuss the cyclic prefix in the next section.

Simulation Model

Write a simple script where a BPSK modulated signal transmitted on the 52 used subcarriers
may be used for understanding generation of an OFDM signal. The script should be based on
802.11a specifications.

Figure: Spectrum of an OFDM transmission (based on 802.11a specification)

Cylcic prefix in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

In the previous section, we studied the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

(OFDM) transmission. Let us know probe bit more into the motivation of cyclic prefix (aka
guard interval) associated with each OFDM symbol.

What is cyclic prefix?

Let us consider one subcarrier (subcarrier +1 specified in IEEE 802.11a specification)

alone. In the figure shown below, the blue line corresponds to the original sine wave where one
cycle of the sine wave is of duration 64 samples ( with 20MHz bandwidth), corresponding
to subcarrier of frequency 312.5kHz.

Figure: Sine wave with cyclic prefix

To add the cyclic prefix, 16 samples ( ) from the end of the sine wave are appended
to the beginning of the signal (shown in green colour). As it can be seen, appending of cyclic
prefix does not cause any discontinuities and we still have the original signal of frequency
312.5kHz.

Further, after adding cyclic prefix, as the sine wave is of duration , we now have a
bigger window for choosing one period of the sine wave. Of course, depending on which set of
is chosen, the phase needs to be corrected, but that will be a trivial operation in a typical
implementation.

Effect of passing a sine wave through a multipath channel

Let us consider a simple multipath channel of the form

 Let the transmit symbol be a single sine wave . The received signal is:

As can be seen from the above equation, after passing through the multipath channel, the
received signal is the original sinusoidal albeit with modifications in amplitude and phase.

Use of cyclic prefix in multipath channel

Cyclic prefix acts as a buffer region where delayed information from the previous
symbols can get stored. The receiver has to exclude samples from the cyclic prefix which got
corrupted by the previous symbol when choosing the samples for an OFDM symbol. Further,
from the previous section, we learned that a sine wave added with a delayed version of the
samesine wave does not affect its frequency (it only affects the amplitude and phase).

Figure: OFDM symbol with multipath

Given so, for demodulating the received symbol, the receiver can choose samples
from a region which is not affected by the previous symbol. As shown in the figure above, the
samples can be chosen from the blue-arrow region OR the orange-arrow region OR somewhere
in between.
 Note:

When the pertinent samples of an OFDM symbol is taken (as explained above), the
orthogonality aspect in OFDM is not affected by the multipath channel i.e. even though the
individual subcarriers undergo phase and amplitude change, as the frequency is not affected,
there is no interference between the subcarriers.

Cons of cyclic prefix

Of course, the flipside of adding cyclic prefix is the loss in data rate as we are conveying
redundant information.

Choosing the cyclic prefix duration

Given that transmission of cyclic prefix reduces the data rate, the system designers will
want to minimize the cyclic prefix duration. Typically, cyclic prefix duration is determined by
the expected duration of the multipath channel in the operating environment. For example, for
the indoor wireless multipath channel, the typically expected multipath channel is of around
duration, hence determining the cyclic prefix chosen per the IEEE 802.11a specification.

Summary
1. Passing a sine wave through a multipath channel does not affect the frequency of the
sinusoidal.

2. As the multipath channel does not change the frequency of the sine wave, multipath
channel does not affect orthogonality of the subcarriers (only if the receiver chooses samples
which correspond only to the delay-added versions of the samples of the current symbol).

3. Transmission of cyclic prefix reduces the data rate, hence the cyclic prefix duration
should not be much more than the duration of the maximum expected multipath channel.