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Course Objectives:
·Understand the basic OFMD concepts
1 System Overview...........................................................................................................................................1
3 OFDM Applications....................................................................................................................................23
3.2.2 SC-FDMA...............................................................................................................................28
i
1 System Overview
Knowledge points:
where, d indicates the distance vector between the MS and the BS, and |d| indicates the
distance between the MS and the BS. According to the equation above, the impacts of
wireless channels on signals can be classified into three types:
1. The path loss |d|-n of electromagnetic waves in free space is also called large
scale fading, where the value range of n is usually 3–4.
2. The shadow fading S(d) indicates the fading due to blocking or shadowing from
buildings or other obstacles or topographic relief in propagation environments.
1
wave decrease for out-of-phase waves.
channels
Because of MS motion, wireless channels experience varies over time, for example,
Doppler shift. Path loss and shadow fading in free space mainly affect wireless area
coverage, which can be eliminated by appropriate design.
When radio waves travel in free space, the signal power level decreases with the
increasing propagation distance. This brings an unfavorable impact on data rate and
system performance. The simplest path loss model regarding large scale fading can be
expressed as follows:
where, Pi indicates the average local transmit signal power, Pr indicates the receive
power, and d indicates the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. In a
typical propagation environment, the path loss γ usually ranges from 2 to 4. Thus, the
average Signal Noise Ratio (SNR) is given by:
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Chapter 1 System Overview
where, N0 indicates the single-sideband noise spectrum density, B indicates the signal
bandwidth, and K indicates a constant independent from distance, power, and
bandwidth. If reliable receiving can be implemented, then it is required that SNR ≥
SNR0, where SNR0 denotes an SNR threshold. Path loss will limit the bit rate:
If no other special techniques are adopted, the symbol rate and wave propagation scope
will be dramatically limited. In general cellular systems, however, the impact of the
large scale fading on mobile communications systems can be neglected because the cell
scale is relatively small.
When a large obstruction such as a hill or large building obscures the path of
electromagnetic waves travelling in free space, the shadow of the invisible magnetic
field from such an obstacle leads to a median field strength change and thus causes
fading, sometimes referred to as shadow fading.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
Radio waves take different time and phases to travel different distances on differing
paths. Multiple signals in different phases are superimposed each other at the receiver.
Constructive superposition results in signal amplitude increase, while destructive
superposition results in signal amplitude decrease. Dramatic amplitude changes of
received signals will lead to fading.
For example, if the transmitter sends a narrowband pulse signal, the receiver can
receive multiple narrowband pulses, which have different fading conditions, time
delays and quantities, and each corresponds to one transmitted pulse signal. The
following figure shows the signals received by the receiver. This results in wireless
channel time dispersion, where τmax denotes the maximum delay spread.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
The waveform of a symbol in the received signals may expand to other symbols due to
delay spread during transmission, resulting in inter-symbol interference (ISI). To avoid
the ISI, the symbol rate must be larger than the reciprocal of the maximum delay
spread. Since the delay spreads measured at different time vary with geographical
locations in complex mobile environments, we need to adopt the average value of large
amounts of statistical data.
environments
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
Astronomers judge that other galaxies are moving away from us according to the
Doppler effect, which leads us to an interpretation that the universe is expanding. The
relationship between frequency and rate in Doppler effect is quite familiar to us. For
example, when a car approaches, its siren gets louder (the sound frequency increases);
when the car drives away, its siren’s pitch gets lower (the sound frequency decreases).
Time varying nature of channel indicates that the transfer function of a channel varies
over time. In other words, received signals are different for the same signals sent at
different moments, as shown in the figure below.
multipath propagation
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Chapter 1 System Overview
Doppler shift
When an MS moves toward the incident wave direction, the Doppler shift is positive
and the frequency of the signals received by the MS will increase. When an MS moves
in the opposite direction of the incident wave, the Doppler shift is negative and the
frequency of the signals received by the MS will decrease. Due to the Doppler shift,
when a monophonic signal (f0) reaches the receiver, its spectrum is no longer the
function δ located at ±f0 on the frequency axis but the spectrum distributed in ( ) and
with a certain bandwidth. Table 1.1-2 lists the maximum Doppler shifts of two carriers
at different moving speeds.
From the time domain perspective, another concept related to Doppler shift is
coherence time.
Coherence time is an average time duration over which the channel impulse response is
invariant, and in which two signals have strong potential for amplitude correlation. If
the reciprocal of the baseband signal bandwidth, usually the symbol bandwidth, is
greater than the coherence time of wireless channels, signal waveform may experience
some changes, leading to signal distortion and time-selective fading, also called fast
fading. If the symbol bandwidth is less than the coherence time, the signal goes non-
time-selective fading, also called slow fading.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
Free space propagation loss and shadow fading mainly affect the coverage in radio
areas, which can be eliminated by appropriate design. Radio communications systems
need to focus on removing the impact of time-selective fading and frequency-selective
fading which can be achieved by using the OFDM technologies.
Figure Basic Concepts About OFDM-7 Channel distribution in classical FDM and OFDM
OFDM principle: Divide a channel into several orthogonal subchannels. Convert high-
rate data signals into low-rate parallel substreams and modulate them on each
subchannel, as shown in the figure below.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
The OFDM utilizes Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) and Fast Fourier
Transform (FFT) to implement modulation and demodulation as shown in the figure
below.
Figure Basic Concepts About OFDM-9 OFDM modulation and demodulation processes
1. The transmitter converts high-rate serial data into low-rate parallel data for data
transmission by using multiple orthogonal subcarriers.
5. The receiver performs bit sampling at the backend of the demodulator to acquire
and convert data into high-rate serial data.
As a key role in the evolution to B3G/4G, the OFDM can maximize system
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
· The OFDM system converts high-rate serial data into low-rate parallel data to
extend the symbol duration on each subcarrier, which effectively reduces the ISI
caused by time dispersion on wireless channels and simplifies the receiver
balance. Sometimes the ISI impact can be eliminated by adding a cyclic prefix
instead of using any balancer.
10
Chapter 1 System Overview
· Wireless channels have frequency selectivity and all subcarriers are less likely to
be concurrently in deep fading. Subchannels with a higher SNR can be fully
utilized through dynamic bit allocation and dynamic subchannel allocation, thus
improving system performance.
· The OFDM system can be easily combined with other access methods including
Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA), Frequency
Hopping OFDM (FH-OFDM), and OFDM-TDMA and to comprise an OFDMA
system to enable multiple users to simultaneously transfer information by use of
OFDM technologies.
· There are multiple orthogonal subcarriers in the OFDM system, but the output
signals are generated by overlap of several subchannels. Compared with Single
Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems, the OFDM system has the following
disadvantages:
11
2 Key Technologies of OFDM
Knowledge points:
Synchronization technology
Channel estimate
Figure Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix-10 ICI caused by idle guard interval
13
Every OFDM symbol contains all non-zero subcarrier signals and delay signals. The
figure above shows the delay signals of the first and the second subcarriers. In the FFT
calculation period, the difference of number of periods between the first subcarrier and
the second subcarrier with a delay is no longer an integer. Therefore, the second
subcarrier will cause interference when the receiver attempts to modulate the first
subcarrier. Similarly, the first subcarrier may cause interference when the receiver
attempts to modulate the second subcarrier.
To avoid the ICI caused by multipath delay effect, an OFDM symbol needs to be added
with a cyclic prefix within its guard interval, as shown in the figure below. This can
ensure that the delayed copies of an OFDM symbol contain an integral number of
waveform periods in an FFT period and no ICI is caused during demodulation of the
delay signals with delays less than the guard interval Tg.
Figure Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix-11 Cyclic prefix of an OFDM symbol
Generally, when the guard interval accounts for 20%, the power loss
is not more than 1 dB while the data rate loss reaches up to 20%. In traditional
SC-FDMA systems, there are also data rate (bandwidth) losses. Guard interval
insertion can eliminate the ISI and the ICI caused by multipath delay effect, so such
losses are worthwhile. Figure Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix-12 shows a block diagram of
the IDFT(IFFT)-based OFDM system with a guard interval inserted.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
Figure Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix-13 IFFT-based OFDM modulation and cyclic prefix
insertion
The figure above shows the process of OFDM modulation and cyclic prefix insertion:
The transmitter converts serial data signals into parallel output which are the data
symbols to be modulated on corresponding subcarriers and can be deemed as a group
of data in the frequency domain. After the IFFT, the parallel data is transformed into
the data located at dispersed time points. In this way, IFFT implements conversion
from frequency domain to time domain.
Figure Guard Interval and Cyclic Prefix-14 shows a group of Quadrature Phase Shift
Keying (QPSK) symbols to be transmitted.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
· The receiver does not know the timed start position of symbols.
· Sample synchronization: The receiver and the transmitter must have the same
sampling frequency.
· Timed symbol synchronization: The IFFT and the FFT must have the same start
and end time.
Compared with the SC-FDMA system, the OFDM system has a higher
requirement for synchronization precision, because synchronization deviation will
cause the ISI and the ICI. Figure Synchronization Technology-16 shows the synchronization
requirements of the OFDM system and the locations of various synchronizations in the system.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
Frequency deviation between the transmitter and the receiver leads to frequency offset
of received signals in the frequency domain. If a frequency offset is n times of the
subcarrier interval (n is an integer), although subcarriers can still maintain orthogonal,
the frequency already deviates n subcarriers away from the original value, which will
result in up to 0.5 bit error rate (BER) of data symbols mapped into the OFDM
spectrum.
If a carrier frequency deviation is not integral times of the subcarrier interval, there
may exist energy leakage between subcarriers, which impairs the orthogonality
between subcarriers and leads to mutual interference between subchannels and system
BER increase.
and out-of-synchronization
Usually we can achieve carrier synchronization through two processes: acquisition and
tracing. In tracing mode, only frequency fluctuations need to be handled. When the
receiver is in acquisition mode, the frequency deviation may be as large as several
times of the subcarrier interval.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
needs to consider the tasks to be executed in a specific period, which brings sufficient
freedom for synchronous structure design. In phase I, we only need to consider how to
roughly estimate the carrier frequency in a large acquisition scope without considering
the tracing performance. In phase II, we only need to consider how to achieve better
tracing performance.
A cyclic prefix guard interval is inserted between OFDM symbols, so the start time of
synchronization between OFDM symbols can change within the guard interval without
causing any ICI or ISI, as shown in the figure below.
The ICI and ISI exist only when the FFT calculation window goes beyond the symbol
boundary or falls in the symbol amplitude roll-off zone. This means that the OFDM
system does not require strict timed synchronization between symbols. However, we
must identify the optimal symbol timing in order to achieve the best system
performance in a multipath propagation environment. Although the start time of
synchronization can be selected at discretion within the guard interval, any symbol
timing change may enhance the sensitivity of the OFDM system to delay spread and
thus the tolerant delay spread of the system will be lower than the preset value. To
minimize this negative impact, we need to reduce the deviation of timed symbol
synchronization as much as possible.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
systems eliminate the ISI by inserting a guard interval. To avoid resource waste, we
usually utilize the information carried by the guard interval to implement the maximum
likelihood estimation for symbol synchronization and carrier synchronization.
Figure Synchronization Technology-21 OFDM block diagram used in carrier synchronization and
symbol synchronization
Channel estimate methods are commonly based on pilot channel and pilot symbol
(reference symbol). The multi-carrier system has a time-frequency two-dimensional
(2D) structure, so pilot symbol assisted channel estimate is more flexible. This estimate
method is to insert some known symbols and sequences in several fixed locations of
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
transmitter signals, so that the receiver can perform channel estimate using applicable
algorithms based on these pilot symbols and sequences. In a single-carrier system, pilot
symbols and sequences can be inserted in the time axis only and the receiver extracts
pilot symbols to estimate the channel pulse response. In a multi-carrier system, pilot
symbols can be inserted in both time and frequency axes and the receiver extracts pilot
symbols to estimate the channel transfer function. We can insert filters in a 2D structure
to estimate the channel transfer function only if the interval of pilot symbols in time
and frequency directions is small enough as opposed to the channel bandwidth.
Signal pre-distortion is the simplest way to reduce the PAPR. Before sent to an
amplifier, signals undergo non-linear processing which aims to perform pre-distortion
for the signals with a high PAPR to prevent them from going beyond the dynamic
change scope of the amplifier. The most popular signal distortion technologies include
amplitude limiting and compression and expansion.
Amplitude limiting before signals pass the non-linear components can reduce the peak
signal level to be lower than the expected maximum level. Amplitude limiting is quite
simple but also brings problems for the OFDM system. First, distortion of the OFDM
symbol amplitude will cause interference to the system itself, leading to BER
performance degradation. Second, non-linear distortion of OFDM signals will increase
the outband radiation power. Amplitude limiting can be deemed as a process of
multiplying the OFDM sample symbol by a rectangular window function. When the
amplitude of OFDM signals is less than the threshold value, the amplitude value of this
rectangular window function is 1. When the signal amplitude needs to be limited, the
amplitude value of this rectangular window function must be less than 1. As we all
know, time multiplied by frequency is equivalent to frequency domain convolution.
Therefore, the limited OFDM symbol spectrum equals the convolution of the original
OFDM symbol spectrum and the window function spectrum. Outband spectral features
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Chapter 1 System Overview
are determined by the signal with a large spectral bandwidth, that is, by the spectrum of
the rectangular window function.
Figure PAPR Reduction Technology-22 Window adding for time domain OFDM symbols
The principle for selecting a window function: Ensure that the window function has
good spectral features and does not stay an overlong time in the time domain to prevent
bringing an impact to more time domain sampling signals.
Besides amplitude limiting, signal compression and expansion is another choice for
signal pre-distortion. In a classical expansion method, symbols of smaller amplitude
are amplified while those of larger amplitude remain unchanged. This increases the
average system transmit power but also makes the symbol power be closer to the non-
linear change area of the power amplifier, easily resulting in signal distortion.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
expansion means through which large-power transmit signals are compressed and
small-power transmit signals are amplified to keep the average power of transmit
signals relatively unchanged. This not only reduces the system PAPR, but also
enhances anti-interference capability of small-power signals. μ-law compression and
expansion can be employed in this means. Implement compression and expansion on
signals at the transmitter, and carry out reverse operations at the receiver to restore
original data signals. Figure PAPR Reduction Technology-23 shows the OFDM system
baseband diagram with compression and expansion changes.
Figure PAPR Reduction Technology-24 OFDM system baseband diagram with compression and
expansion changes
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3 OFDM Applications
OFDMA divides transmission bandwidth into several subcarrier sets that are
orthogonal and allocates them to different users to flexibly achieve resource sharing
among MSs, thus implementing multiple access between among users. OFDMA can be
considered as a multiple access mode combining OFDM, FDMA, and TDMA
technologies.
In the OFDMA system, every user can be allocated with a fixed time-frequency grid
diagram so that each user utilizes specific part of subcarriers and their subcarriers are
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different with each other, as shown in the figure below.
24
Chapter 1 System Overview
· The OFDMA system is free from interference within the cell, so it can achieve
larger system capacity.
· OFDMA can flexibly cater to the loan requirements. It can adapt to a specific
transmission bandwidth by simply changing the number of subcarriers users.
· When a user transfer rate rises, OFDMA can be adopted in combination with the
dynamic channel allocation technology to support high-rate data transfer.
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
2. The DFT output signals are sent to the N-point Inverse Discrete Fourier
Transform (IDFT), where N>M. Because the IDFT is longer than the DFT, the
excess input of the IDFT is padded with zeros.
3. Add a cyclic prefix for this group of data after IDFT to avoid the ISI.
If the length M of DFT equals the length N of IDFT, then both DFT and IDFT effects
will be cancelled after they are cascaded and the output signal will be an ordinary
single-carrier modulated signal. When N>M and the IDFT is padded with zeros, the
IDFT output signal has the following features:
1. The PAPR of the IDFT output is less than that of the OFDM signal.
Acquire the spectrum of input signals through DFT. The N-point IDFT can be deemed
as an OFDM modulation procedure which is actually to modulate the spectral
information of input signals to multiple orthogonal subcarriers. OFDM subcarriers in
LTE downlink carry data symbols directly, so the PAPR of DFTS-OFDM can maintain
the same PAPR as the original data symbol. An example with N=M can illustrate this
point, as shown in the figure below.
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Chapter 1 System Overview
The spectrum of input data symbols can be moved to a different location by changing
the mapping from DFT output to IDFT input. Figure 3.2-4 shows two mapping modes:
centralized mapping and distributed mapping.
modulation schemes
Figure3.2-5 shows the spectral distribution of output signals in these two mapping
modes.
3.2.2 SC-FDMA
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LTE_FDD_eNB_C_11 LTE OFDM Principle
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