IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications
Filter Bank OFDM:
A New Way of Looking at FBMC
Hao Lin
Orange Labs, Cesson Sévigné, France
Abstract—Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (FBMC) with Offset
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OQAM) has been actively
investigated for decades. Now it is also a candidate for 5G air
interface waveform. Nevertheless, when it goes to standardization
consideration, people still prefer Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplex (OFDM), in spite of its identified drawbacks for 5G.
Such conservative attitude comes from the fact that people are not
sure about how costly it would be to adapt all the existing OFDM-
based solutions to FBMC systems, in particular for Multiple-
Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques. For FBMC, these
can be interpreted as compatibility and complexity issues. In
this paper, we intend to solve these two issues by introducing a
new way of looking at FBMC, where we challenge the traditional
transmission fashion. Eventually, our study brings us to a more
concise and compatible format which we call it Filter-Bank
OFDM.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Research activities on FBMC have been conducted for
decades. Now it is also a candidate for 5G air interface
waveform [1], [2]. The main benefits brought by FBMC in the
5G respect are two lines: good spectrum containment and re-
laxing synchronization condition [1]. The good spectrum con-
tainment can enable flexible service offloading, e.g. between
5G and white space bands, which is helpful for emergency
communications [1]. Whilst, the capability of allowing relaxed
synchronism is of paramount important in future Machine
Type Communications (MTC), not only allowing for signaling
overhead reduction but also guaranteeing a stringent latency
[2]. These advantages make FBMC an interesting alternatives
to Long Term Evolution (LTE) waveform, i.e., OFDM. How-
ever, since the best effort Mobile Broad-Band (MBB), which
seeks for more throughput with advanced MIMO solutions
[3], will continue playing a major role in future 5G systems,
potential waveform candidate must prove that, besides its
advantages, its usage will not create severe negative impact
on the MBB service. Unfortunately, the usage of FBMC in
MBB, compared to OFDM, might be less appealing due to
two issues: complexity and compatibility with LTE.
The complexity can further be divided into two parts: the
modem complexity and the Signal Processing (SP) complexity.
The former refers to the modulation and demodulation for a
Multi-Carrier (MC) system. The latter is related to the other
complementary components, e.g. Channel Estimation (CE),
equalization, MIMO pre-/decoding, etc., which are necessary
to establish a complete transceiver. The modem complexity is
implementation-dependent. In the FBMC literature, there are
two implementation fashions, i.e. PolyPhase Network-based
(PPN-FBMC) and Frequency Spreading based (FS-FBMC) [4].
The modem complexity of PPN-FBMC w.r.t. OFDM is more
than doubled. Although, wise algorithm can be used on the
978-1-4673-6305-1/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE 1077
modulation side [5], it however cannot relieve the pressure on
the demodulation. On the other hand, the modem complexity
of FS-FBMC is more than 2K times higher than OFDM
[4], where K is the prototype filter overlapping factor whose
common value for FS-FBMC system is 4. The SP complexity
is directly linked to compatibility. Here the compatibility
does not mean that an FBMC receiver is able to decode the
LTE signals, but rather means that FBMC should be able to
reuse the existing LTE techniques, e.g. CE and MIMO pre-
/decoding, in a straightforward manner. This requires that any
technique adaptation should not call for additional re-design
effort. However, in the FBMC literature, if we refer to either
CE (e.g. [6], [7]) or equalization (e.g. [8], [9]) or MIMO design
(e.g. [10], [11]), technique adaptation is always needed and
such design is not straightforward. Moreover, each tailored
technique always introduces additional SP complexity. Thus, a
doubt arises: Is this worth trading the FBMC advantages with
such additional design effort? Therefore, we think that it is
necessary to revisit these two issues for FBMC.
To effectively solve these issues, we decided to identify the
fundamental source problem and tried to break out from the
conventional concept. Eventually, this investigation leads us to
a new FBMC solution which is more concise and flexible. It
can almost solve the mentioned issues and we call this new
solution Filter-Bank OFDM (FB-OFDM). We cannot claim yet
that it is the optimum solution but, indeed, it points out a
new direction for 5G air interface investigation. This paper
is organized as follows: In Sec. II, we revisit the FB theory
and identify the source problem. In Sec. III, we present FB-
OFDM concept and the solution in detail. In Sec. VI, we
discuss the efficiency of the FB-OFDM solution, in terms of
its compatibility and complexity. Finally, some conclusions are
drawn in Sec. V.
II. BALIAN -L OW T HEOREM AND S OURCE P ROBLEM
For a MC system, denote F0 as the spacing between sub-
carriers and T0 as the symbol duration. The modulated signal
can be written as a linear combination of a Gabor family,
i.e. the triplet (f ,T0 ,F0 ), where f is the waveform pulse or
prototype function. Then, there are three factors, namely spec-
tral efficiency, orthogonality and prototype function flexibility
are conditioned by the Balian-Low theorem (BLT) [12]. A
common understanding of BLT is that it is not possible to get a
modulation scheme holding at the same time the property of (i)
orthogonality in the complex field, (ii) a well-localized shape
in frequency domain, and (iii) reaching maximum spectral
efficiency by keeping Nyquist rate transmission [13]. When
OFDM satisfies (i and iii) it cannot obtain a pulse different
from Rectangular. Thus, FBMC chose to relax the complex
orthogonality to real field only in order to meet (ii and iii).
 IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications

Due to the real field orthogonality, FBMC only modulates with

real-valued symbols, i.e. separately transmitting the real and HfM ×2K−1 = 1M ×1 hf1×2K−1 (3)
imaginary parts of the complex-valued QAM symbols with an
offset of T0 /2 signaling (a.k.a. OQAM). With this signaling, it where ⊙ is the Hadamard product, and
can keep the same spectral efficiency as OFDM [13]. However, hf1×2K−1 = [hfK−1 , · · · , hf1 , hf0 , hf1 , · · · , hfK−1 ] (4)
an obvious consequence of using OQAM is that we have
to process the real and imaginary part symbols separately are the real-valued filter coefficients and they are symmetric
which immediately doubles the complexity. Moreover, the with regard to the center element hf0 , and 1M ×1 is an all-one
offset signaling will cause the so-called intrinsic interference column vector. Next, it goes to the mapping process, where
between the real and imaginary part symbols which is the we map each row vector of XM ×2K−1 to the M K-point
essential source for its weak compatibility. As examples, all IFFT entries using overlap-sum operation. The outputs form
the above-mentioned re-designs [6]–[11] were indeed triggered a so-called combinational symbol vector, denoted by yM K×1 ,
by this type of interference. In fact, relaxing the orthogonality which is later fed to the IFFT entries, i.e.
to real field is a smart idea to escape from the BLT. Moreover, M
X −1
to adapt to the real field orthogonality, the OQAM signaling m
yM K×1 = yM K×1 (5)
is a natural solution that was used in the very beginning of m=0
FBMC research and has always been reused in the FBMC
with
literature later on. However, the real field orthogonality does m
! m m

T
not impose to use OQAM signalling. For this reason, in our
yM K×1 = x1×2K−1 G2K−1×M K (6)
T
investigation, we decide to look for alternative solutions to where (·) denotes transpose operation and Gm2K−1×M K is
OQAM signalling for a real-field orthogonal MC system like the overlap-sum matrix for m-th row vector xm
1×2K−1 , given
FBMC. Our idea is to use QAM symbol extension instead by
of OQAM signalling. This idea is actually inspired by the " #T
0mK×2K−1
frequency sampling technique used for FS-FBMC [4]. In fact, m6=0
GM K×2K−1 = I2K−1
more degrees of freedom can be obtained if we shift our system 0K(M −2−m)−1×2K−1
to an extended basis, eventually, leading us to a more concise
and compatible system which is named FB-OFDM. and  T
( 0K×K−1 IK )
III. FB-OFDM C ONCEPT AND S OLUTION G02K−1×M K =  0M K−2K+1×2K−1  (7)
( IK−1 0K−1,K )
In this section, we briefly present FB-OFDM concept and
the obtained solution. The idea is to extend the complex-valued and
QAM symbols to an extended symbol basis. Then map them 
XM ×2K−1 = xm

1×2K−1 , for m ∈ [0, M − 1]. (8)
to an extended sub-channel band. Since the Nyquist criteria
in such extended sub-channel band are already derived [14],
The last step is to transform the combinational symbols
the only remaining work is to find a good symbol extension
yM K×1 from frequency domain to time domain via an M K-
pattern, such that the transmitted symbols can be perfectly
point IFFT. The output is the FB-OFDM signal denoted by
reconstructed on the receiver. Some details are presented in
sM K×1 , i.e.,
the following.
sM K×1 = FH
M K×M K yM K×1 (9)
A. FB-OFDM modulation and demodulation
where FM K×M K is the normalized DFT matrix and (·)H
The FB-OFDM modulation and demodulation diagram is stands for transpose conjugate operation. Now, if we denote
shown in Fig. 1. The modulation part is composed of 4 Ts the system sample interval (in seconds), FB-OFDM needs
processes: 1) symbol extension; 2) filtering; 3) mapping and 4) M KTs seconds to transmit M K QAM symbols, which is
M K-point IFFT, with M being the total number of subcarriers identical to the OFDM system. Therefore, FB-OFDM system,
and K is the extension factor. In the first process, the QAM in theory, keeps the full Nyquist rate as the classical FBMC.
symbols need to be extended according to some pre-defined But, it transmits QAM symbols instead of OQAM.
pattern. We denote CM ×K the block of complex-valued QAM
symbols to be modulated, and we further assume that CM ×K The FB-OFDM demodulation follows a dual process to the
will be extended to size of M × (2K − 1), denoted by modulation part. The received signal s[k], for k ∈ [0, M K −1],
CE is transformed to frequency domain by M K-point FFT, i.e.,
M ×(2K−1) , i.e.
ŷM K×1 = FM K×M K sM K,1 . (10)
CE
M ×2K−1 = CM ×K EK×2K−1 (1)
Then, for each subcarrier m, the demapping finds back the
where EK×2K−1 is the designed symbol extension matrix with corresponding 2K − 1 elements, i.e., x̂m
1×2K−1 , from yM K×1
some particular patterns. And the column number 2K − 1
is chosen according to the frequency sampling technique, i.e. to form X̂M ×2K−1 , given by
symmetric w.r.t. the center frequency [14]. Once the extension ! m
T
x̂m T
1×2K−1 = ŷM K×1 GM K×2K−1 . (11)
is accomplished, it then goes to the filtering process, where
the extended symbol, CE M ×2K−1 , is multiplied by the filter
The next filtering process is identical to that on the modulation
coefficients, i.e. side, yielding
XM ×2K−1 = HfM ×2K−1 ⊙ CE
M ×2K−1 (2) ĈE f
M ×2K−1 = HM ×2K−1 ⊙ X̂M ×2K−1 (12)

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 IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications

E
CM ×K Symbol CM ×2K−1 XM ×2K−1 yM K×1 M K-point sM K×1
Filtering Mapping
Extension IFFT

E
ĈM ×K Symbol ĈM ×2K−1 X̂M ×2K−1 ŷM K×1 M K-point
Filtering Demapping
Recovery FFT

Fig. 1: FB-OFDM modulation and demodulation diagram

Finally, to recover the transmitted QAM symbol, we naturally Algorithm 1 Construct C̄E
M ×2K−1 from CM ×K
take the dual operation to the extension process which is
equivalent to the following expression 1: Arbitrarily select M symbols from CM ×K and map them
to the central column of C̄EM ×2K−1 .
2: if K is an odd number then
ĈM ×K = ĈE T
M ×2K−1 EK×2K−1 . (13)
3: Take the remaining symbols from CM ×K in an arbitrary
order, and form them to K − 1 column vectors.
Now the remaining task is to find the filter coefficients
4: For each column vector, pair it with its conjugate,
hf1×2K−1 and the symbol extension algorithm. forming K − 1 paired-column vectors.
5: Map K−1 paired-column vectors to the remaining 2K−
2 columns of C̄E M ×2K−1 , on the paired positions of
B. Symbol extension algorithm
(14).
Interestingly, we observe that our system is indeed also a 6: end if
frequency spreading system. Thus, it should share the same 7: if K is an even number then
Nyquist conditions that were used for FS-FBMC [14, (5)], i.e. 8: Take the remaining M × (K − 2) symbols from CM ×K
in an arbitrary order, and form them to K − 2 column
 f 2 vectors.
f (h0 ) = 1
hk = (14) 9: For each column vector, pair it with its conjugate,
(hfk )2 + (hfK−k )2 = 1, for k ∈ [1, K − 1].
forming K − 2 paired-column vectors.
10: Map K−2 paired-column vectors to the 2K−4 columns
This greatly simplifies our task as the only remaining item is to
of C̄EM ×2K−1 , on the paired positions of (14).
find the symbol extension matrix EK×2K−1 to satisfy a perfect
11: Take the last M symbols from CM ×K in an arbitrary
reconstruction, i.e. ĈM ×K = CM ×K . Omitting the derivation,
order, and form a paired-column vector by separating
we found that the symbol extension pattern is highly coherent
the real and imaginary parts
with (4) and (14). From (4) we see that the filter coefficients are
12: Map them to the remaining 2 columns of C̄E M ×2K−1 ,
symmetric w.r.t. its central coefficient. Moreover, from (14), it
multiplying with a scale factor.
can be seen that the coefficients on the right (or left) side of
13: end if
hf0 can form (K − 1) paired coefficients which are placed on
(K − 1) so-called paired positions. As a result, our designed
symbol extension pattern also forms a paired symbols which
are then mapped on the paired positions. Our found solution
E
following. For even K, C̄m,k is obtained by, for k ∈ [0, K
2 −2],
tells that the extension process (1) should be rewritten as  E E ∗

 √ ) = Cm,k
C̄m,k = (C̄m,K−2−k
CE = JM ×2K−1 ⊙ (CM ×K EK×2K−1 ) (15)  E
 C̄m,(K/2)−1 = 2ℜ C
M ×2K−1 

| {z }
E E
√ m,(K/2)−1

C̄E
M ×2K−1 C̄m,k = C̄m,(K/2)−1+K = 2ℑ Cm,(K/2)−1

 E
 C̄m,K−1
 = Cm,K/2
where JM ×2K−1 is a necessary permutation which can be 
 C̄ E E ∗
expressed as m,k+K = (C̄m,2K−2−k ) = Cm,k+K/2+1
(17)
E
While for odd K, C̄m,k is obtained by, for k ∈ [0, K−1
2 − 1],
JM ×2K−1 = [jm
1×2K−1 ], for m ∈ [0, M − 1] (16)
 E E ∗
where jm is a row vector with all elements the same  C̄m,k = (C̄m,K−2−k ) = Cm,k
√
1×2K−1
E E
value of ( −1)m except for the center element whose value C̄m,k = C̄ = Cm,(K−1)/2
E  m,K−1
E E
is 1. The construction of the extended symbol C̄m,k , for m ∈ C̄m,k+K = (C̄m,2K−2−k )∗ = Cm,k+(K−1)/2+1
[0, M − 1] and k ∈ [0, 2K − 1], should follow the following (18)
algorithm.
Note that the symbols to be selected from CM ×K to
This algorithm can be mathematically expressed in the C̄E
M ×2K−1 can be arbitrarily chosen. Therefore, (17) and (18)

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 IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications

are not the unique expression1 . On the other hand, (17, 18) −1
10
can be alternatively translated in a matrix form. Taking two OFDM
examples of K = 4 and K = 3, EK×2K−1 is expressed as FB−OFDM
 
1 √0 1∗ 0 0 √0 0
 0 2ℜ 0 0 0 2ℑ 0 
EK×2K−1 |(K=4) = 
0 0 0 1 0 0 0 
0 0 0 0 1 0 1∗

BER
−2
10
and " # 4QAM
1 1∗ 0 0 0 16QAM
64QAM

EK×2K−1 |(K=3) = 0 0 1 0 0
0 0 0 1 1∗
where the element 1∗ stands for conjugation-taken operation,
i.e. Cm,k 1∗ = Cm,k
∗
; while ℜ and ℑ stand for real/imaginary-
√
taken operation, i.e. Cm,k ℜ = ℜ {Cm,k }. The factor of 2 is −3
10
−5 0 5 10 15 20
used to keep constant power. SNR (dB)

At the receiver, the symbol recovery process (13) follows a Fig. 2: BER comparison in AWGN channel with different
dual operation to symbol extension process (17, 18), yielding constellation orders: FB-OFDM vs. OFDM with same spectral
 !

ĈM ×K = J∗M ×2K−1 ⊙ ĈE ETK×2K−1 ℑ7→jℜ efficiency and transmit power.
M ×2K−1
| {z }
ČM ×2K−1

where ℑ 7→ jℜ indicates
√ that if there is ℑ, we use ℜ instead; IV. D ISCUSSIONS
then multiply with −1. We can alternatively use linear
system representation to express symbol recovery process. For In this section, we discuss the efficiency of FB-OFDM
even K, Ĉm,k can be recovered by, for k ∈ [0, (K/2) − 2], and how to use it in practice. Due to the page limit, not
 all our results can be shown in this paper. Only illustrative
∗
 Ĉm,k = Čm,k +Čm,K−2−k hints are provided. Further elaborations will be given in future


 √ n o n o
publications.
Ĉm, K −1 = 2 ℜ Čm, K −1 + jℜ Čm, K −1+K
2 2 2
 Ĉ

 m,K/2 = Čm,K−1
 A. User isolation
Ĉm,k+K/2+1 = Čm,k+K + (Čm,2K−2−k )∗
(19) In a practical MC system, not all the subcarriers are used.
While for odd K, Ĉm,k can be recovered by, for k ∈ [0, K−1
2 − For instance in LTE (5 MHz) system, only 300 subcarriers are
1], used for transmitting payload over the overall 512 subcarriers.
 ∗ Moreover, these 300 subcarriers are further separated into 25
 Ĉm,k = Čm,k + Čm,K−2−k chunks (each contains 12 subcarriers), so that the chunks can
Ĉ = Čm,K−1 be allocated for multiple users. For FB-OFDM, one drawback
 m,(K−1)/2
Ĉm,k+(K−1)/2+1 = Čm,k+K + (Čm,2K−2−k )∗ is that if two adjacent chunks are allocated to different users,
Naturally, if a block interleaver is applied before the symbol their combinational symbols will overlap at the extended
extension process, a de-interleaver should equivalently be symbol layer. This causes inter-user interference for channel
applied after the symbol recovery process. It is worth noting estimation, and will be more cumbersome for MIMO pre-
that when K = 1, the FB-OFDM automatically generates the /decoding. To solve this issue, special care must be taken at the
classical OFDM signal. edge of the allocated bands in order to avoid such overlapping.
One simple solution is to insert null symbols to the first
C. Power increase due to symbol extension (or the last) subcarrier of the extended symbols C̄E N ×2K−1 ,
where N is the number of allocated subcarriers. For example,
It is obvious that the transmit power is increased due to if we insert the null symbols to the first subcarrier of the
the symbol extension. Thus, to keep the same transmit power E
extended symbols, we force C̄0,0···K−1 = 0. Alternatively, we
as in OFDM p case, the FB-OFDM signal can be normalized by can insert the null symbols to the last subcarrier, such that
the factor of (2K − 1)/K. Nevertheless, this does not affect E
C̄N −1,K···2K−1 = 0. The later option, according to (17,18),
the FB-OFDM noise sensitivity due to the addition in (19,20). corresponds to the modification of original symbols as
In Fig. 2 we show the Bit Error Rate (BER) comparison  
between FB-OFDM and OFDM under an AWGN channel CN −1,K/2−1 = ℜ CN −1,K/2−1
For even K: (20)
with different constellation orders. Our simulation parameters CN −1,K/2+1···K−1 = 0.
are: (M = 512, K = 4, no coding) and we assume the
same throughput and transmit power for both systems. The For odd K: CN,(K−1)/2+1···K−1 = 0. (21)
results confirm that FB-OFDM has the same noise sensitivity With this solution, the combinational symbols of a given user
as OFDM. are completely isolated from the other user who accesses to
1 One can imagine to apply a random block interleaver on C
M ×K before
the adjacent band. However, transmitting null symbols will
the symbol extension process. naturally reduce the spectral efficiency.

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 IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications
0.18
0.16
0.14
1−chunk alloc.
0.12 2−chunk alloc.
3−chunk alloc.
SE loss (dB)
0.1 10−chunk alloc.
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
2 3 4 5 6 7
K value
Fig. 3: SE loss due to user isolation.
K−1
The quantified loss is 2N
K which depends on the allocated
subcarrier number N and K. Nevertheless, in Fig. 3, we show
that this loss is not significant. Actually, the worse case is
when only 1 chunk is allocated for the user. While from 2-
chunk allocation this loss is reduced to, e.g. 0.07 dB for K =
4. Moreover, the energy saving due to transmitting the null
symbols can be taken advantage of to boost the rest of the non-
zero symbols at the subcarrier. In practice, when the channel
coding is applied, the spectral efficiency loss can be further
reduced by mapping the filler bits to the null symbols.
B. Solving compatibility issue with layer processing
The concept of layer processing is fairly important for
FB-OFDM to resort a good compatibility with OFDM-based
techniques. In fact, the speciality of FB-OFDM is that we can
handle the channel fading compensation and symbol detection
at different layers, we name them the original symbol layer
(i.e. CM ×K ) and the extended symbol layer (i.e. yM K×1 ).
If we look at (9,10) alone, it is indeed an extended OFDM
system. If we further insert a CP to each FB-OFDM symbol
sM K×1 , the extended symbol layer at the receiver has OFDM-
like character, i.e.
ŷM K×1 = HcM K×M K yM K×1 ,
with HcM K×M K
a diagonal matrix with over-sampled channel
frequency coefficients laying on the diagonal entries. Thus, the
processing served for multi-path channel compensation, e.g.
CE, equalization, MIMO pre-/decoding, should naturally be
proceeded at the extended symbol layer. Then at the original
symbol layer the symbol detection should be proceeded. For
OFDM system, as it is a special case of FB-OFDM with K =
1, these two layers are actually merged to one layer.
Knowing the concept of layer processing, the channel
estimation and equalization become very straightforward. The
processing should be operated at the extended symbol layer.
The complexity for channel equalization is the same as LTE.
For example, if we assume a one-tap Zero-Forcing (ZF)
equalization, to equalize CN ×K , we will need N K complex
divisions which leads to exactly the same complexity as LTE.
Regarding the compatibility with LTE MIMO techniques,
due to the user isolation solution, the MIMO application
for FB-OFDM becomes fairly straightforward. Although our
investigation in this aspect has yet completed, we can already
provide some hints on the compatibility of FB-OFDM with
LTE MIMO modes. For example, it can use exactly the same
Space Frequency Block Coding (SFBC) method as it is used
in LTE, providing even a better performance than LTE due
to the fact that the frequency selectivity issue for SFBC is
relieved at the extended symbol layer [15]. The complexity for
SFBC encoder/decoder should be the same as LTE. Similar to
SFBC, the open/closed-loop spatial multiplexing can also be
readily adapted for FB-OFDM. MIMO pre-coding should also
be proceeded at the extended symbol layer. The performance
of FB-OFDM system with different MIMO modes, together
with the corresponding complexity, will be reported in future
8 publications.
C. Complexity analysis
In this section, we discuss the complexity of using FB-
OFDM scheme compared to OFDM. From above discussions,
we deduce that the complexity increase by FB-OFDM is possi-
bly only due to the modem since CE, equalization and MIMO
processing should not introduce more additional complexity.
We will leave the proof of the latter statement in our future
work. Here, we only focus on the modem complexity increase.
Following the FB-OFDM transceiver diagram (Fig. 1), the
symbol extension process does not consume any calculation.2
In fact, the complexity consuming processes are:1) filtering,
2) IFFT, 3) FFT and 4) symbol recovery. In the following, the
complexity is evaluated in terms of Complex Multiplications
(CoM) and Complex Additions (CoA). In filtering process,
there are 2K − 1 real-valued coefficients where the center co-
efficient is always 1 which does not consume calculation. The
rest 2K −2 coefficients need to be multiplied with the extended
symbols. Here we count each multiplication between extended
symbol and the real-valued filter coefficient as (1/2) CoM.
Thus, to process CN ×K QAM symbols the filtering operation
needs (N (2K − 2) − K + 1)/2 CoM and N (K − 1) CoA3 .
The receiver filtering process consumes the same complexity.
Further, we assume that the M K-point IFFT/FFT consumes
(M K/2) log2 (M K) CoM and M K log2 (M K) CoA. The
symbol recovery process consumes N (K − 1)/2 CoA for odd
(22) K and N (K/2 − 1) CoA for even K. Finally, the overall
modem complexity of FB-OFDM is summarized below
CoM(Tx) = CoM(Rx) (23)
= N K − N − (K − 1 + M K log2 (M K))/2
CoA(Tx) = CoA(Rx) − α (24)
= N (K − 1) + M K log2 (M K),
where 
N (K − 1)/2, for odd K
α= (25)
N (K/2 − 1), for even K
2 Note
√
that, in practical implementation, the normalized factor 2 for even
K can be taken into account when defining the constellation dynamics,
therefore, it does not need to be calculated online.
3 Here we assume that user isolation is applied for FB-OFDM.
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 IEEE ICC 2015 - Workshop on 5G & Beyond - Enabling Technologies and Applications
As a reference, the OFDM modem complexity, for processing
CN ×K , symbols is assumed to be
CoM(Tx) = CoM(Rx) = (M K/2) log2 (M )
(26)
CoA(Tx) = CoA(Rx) = M K log2 (M ).
In the following comparison, we take LTE-DL 20 MHz
configuration as our baseline, where M = 2048 and the
overall modulated subcarriers are divided into 100 chunks.
In what follows, We separately compare the Transmitter (Tx)
complexity and Receiver (Rx) complexity because the Tx
complexity is consumed by Base Station (BS) where full
chunks should be considered. While the Rx complexity is
on User Equipment (UE) side, i.e. only allocated chunks are
concerned. For UE Rx complexity, we consider two cases: 1)
Full-Chunk allocation; 2) 1 Chunk allocation. The comparison
results are given in Tab. I with K = 4.
TABLE I: Modem complexity increase
BS (Full-Chunk) UE (Full-Chunk) UE (1 Chunk)
CoM 26% 26% 18.3%
CoA 22% 23.5% 18.2%
The complexity increase on the BS side is 26% and on
UE side the increase is between 18% and 26%, which is
significantly lower than that of PPN-FBMC (more than ×2)
and FS-FBMC (more than ×8). Note that if we compare the
complexity of a complete receiver processing, this complexity
increase ratio for FB-OFDM will significantly be reduced.
D. Key difference between FB-OFDM and FS-/PPN-FBMC
There are two key differences between FB-OFDM and
FS/PPN-FBMC. The first difference is that FS/PPN-FBMC
systematically separates real and imaginary parts of the QAM
symbols and processes them separately. While FB-OFDM
scheme does not apply such separation in a systematic manner;
this thus greatly reduces the modem complexity. The second
difference is that, for FS/PPN-FBMC systems, after the IFFT
transform, there is always an overlapping, in the time domain,
between at least two consecutive FBMC symbols. This over-
lapping indeed makes FBMC weakly compatible with OFDM-
based techniques. While FB-OFDM scheme does not have
such overlapping in the time domain. This actually solves the
compatibility issue. Moreover, FB-OFDM has an additional
advantage, i.e. diversity gain. Due to the symbol extension, it
introduces symbol diversity, i.e. the original QAM symbol and
its conjugate part. Therefore, the channel decoding can indeed
take advantage of this property to obtain a diversity gain.
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we presented a new modulation format
named FB-OFDM. This modulation scheme has greatly re-
1082
lieved two issues that we identified for traditional FBMC
scheme, namely complexity issue and compatibility issue with
OFDM. The FB-OFDM scheme indeed can largely reduce
the additional complexity w.r.t. OFDM (i.e. less than 30%).
Moreover, this scheme is completely compatible with OFDM.
Actually OFDM can be seen as one special case of FB-
OFDM. Therefore, all the complementary techniques, such as
channel estimation, equalization, MIMO pre-/decoding can be
straightforwardly re-used for FB-OFDM without the needs of
additional re-design effort.
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