CARRIER PREDICTION IN OFDM (OFDM BASICS)

NAME OF STUDENTS:

SOMYA ANAND PAWANJEET SINGH

(8102180) (8102)

NAME OF SUPERVISOR:

MR. VIVEK DWIVEDI

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION JAYPEE INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA

TABLE OF CONTENTS

No.

Topics

Page No.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Acknowledgement Introduction Review / Background Material Contributional work Description and Results Advantages and Disadvantages of OFDM Conclusion Future Prospects References

1 2 3 4 12 13 14 15

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We would like to thank all those people who have lent a hand to make this project STUDY OF OFDM a success. We would like to express our gratitude especially towards our mentor Mr. Vivek Dwivedi without whom this project could never have been completed, as he not only motivated us but also cleared our doubts about OFDM. Our mentor has been a great support and source of inspiration for us to complete this project successfully in time. We are thankful for his time and knowledge which he shared with us. This project has been a great learning experience for us and has proved to be a great help in creating interest in OFDM SYSTEMS.

Signature of the student Name of the Student Date

Signature of the student Name of the Student Date

INTRODUCTION

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the latest modulation-techniques used in order to combat the frequency-selectivity of the transmission channels, achieving high data rate without intersymbol interference. The basic principle of OFDM is gaining a wide spread popularity within the wireless transmission community. Furthermore, OFDM is one of the main techniques proposed to be employed in 4th Generation Wireless Systems. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the concepts behind OFDM. This project is about
basics of OFDM.

Transmitting the data among a large number of closely spaced subcarriers accounts for the frequency division multiplexing part of the name. Unlike the classical frequency division multiplexing technique, OFDM will provide much higher bandwidth efficiency. This is due to the fact that in OFDM the spectra of individual subcarriers are allowed to overlap. In fact, the carriers are carefully chosen to be orthogonal one another. As it is well known, the orthogonal signals do not interfere, and they can be separated at the receiver by correlation techniques. The orthogonality of the subcarriers accounts for the first part of the OFDM name.

REVIEW/BACKGROUND MATERIAL

1. What is OFDM? 2. Basics of OFDM 3. IFFT and FFT 4. Serial to parallel 5. Modulation 6. Guard band and Cyclic prefix 7. Delay spread 8. Inter Symbol Interference 9. Fading 10. Frequency Offset

CONTRIBUTIONAL WORK, DESCRIPTION AND RESULTS

This project was a joint effort and as it was all about reading and learing about basics of OFDM so, there was no division of work. Both of us have studied the basics of OFDM. OFDM is a vast topic and as we had no prior knowledge of this topic so we had to start from the very basics. The topics that have been covered are as follows:

WHY OFDM? Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) extends the concept of single carrier modulation by using multiple subcarriers within the same single channel. The total data rate to be sent in the channel is divided between the various subcarriers. FDM offers an advantage over single-carrier modulation in terms of narrowband frequency interference since this interference will only affect one of the frequency sub bands. The other subcarriers will not be affected by the interference. Since each subcarrier has a lower information rate, the data symbol periods in a digital system will be longer, adding some additional immunity to impulse noise and reflections. If the FDM system above had been able to use a set of subcarriers that were orthogonal to each other, a higher level of spectral efficiency could have been achieved. The guard bands that were necessary to allow individual demodulation of subcarriers in an FDM system would no longer be necessary. The use of orthogonal subcarriers would allow the subcarriers spectra to overlap, thus increasing the spectral efficiency. As long as orthogonality is maintained, it is still possible to recover the individual subcarriers signals despite their overlapping spectrums.

BLOCK DIAGRAM OF OFDM

IFFT AND FFT

FFT transforms a cyclic time domain signal into equivalent frequency domain spectrum. This is done by finding equivalent waveform as a sum of orthogonal sinusoidal components. The amplitude and phase of the sinusoidal components represent the frequency spectrum of the time domain signal. IFFT performs the reverse process, transforming a spectrum (amplitude and phase of each component) into a time domain signal. An IFFT converts a number of complex data points, of length that is a power of 2, into the time domain signal of the same number of points.

SERIAL TO PARALLEL

The input serial data stream is formatted into the word size required for transmission, e.g. 2 bits/word for QPSK, and shifted into a parallel format. The data is then transmitted in parallel by assigning each data word to one carrier in the transmission.

MODULATION

The signal is then modulated and multiplexed and carrier is added to the signal

Carrier addition at transmitter

Carrier addition at receiver

GUARD BAND AND CYCLIC PREFIX

The guard period used was made up of two sections. Half of the guard period time is a zero amplitude transmission. The other half of the guard period is a cyclic extension of the symbol to be transmitted. The best way to make a guard band is to apply cyclic prefix all over the guard band instead of half zero transmission as cyclic prefix provides multipath immunity and synchronization tolerance. The use of zero transmission in guard band is to calculate symbol timing through envelope detection but it has not been written in any research paper if this symbol timing is relevant. Also the zero transmission doesnt provide any immunity against synchronization problems. So this zero transmission in the guard band is not relevant.

DELAY SPREAD

Delay spread is he measure of the deviations of delays in a multipath transmission. As the symbols are transmitted random delays are introduced in them as they pass through the channel and reach the receiver. As these delays are random therefore there is a deviation in their values from each other. This band of delay times is called delay spread.

INTER SYMBOL INTERFERENCE

One of the causes of intersymbol interference is what is known as multipath propagation in which a wireless signal from a transmitter reaches the receiver via many different paths. Since all of these paths are different lengths plus some of these effects will also slow the signal down this results in the different versions of the signal arriving at different times. This delay means that part or all of a given symbol will be spread into the subsequent symbols, thereby interfering with the correct detection of those symbols. Additionally, the various paths often distort the amplitude and/or phase of the signal thereby causing further interference with the received signal.

Example of intersymbol interference: The green symbol was transmitted first, followed by the blue symbol.

Assume that the time span of the channel is LC samples long. Instead of a single carrier with a data rate of R symbols/second, an OFDM system has N subcarriers, each with a data rate of R/N symbols/second. Because the data rate is reduced by a factor of N, the OFDM symbol period is increased by a factor of N. By choosing an appropriate value for N, the length of the OFDM symbol becomes longer than the time span of the channel. Because of this configuration, the effect of intersymbol interference is the distortion of the first LC samples of the received OFDM symbol. By noting that only the first few samples of the symbol are distorted, one can consider the use of a guard interval to remove the effect of intersymbol interference. The guard interval could be a section of all zero samples transmitted in front of each OFDM symbol. Since it does not contain any useful information, the guard interval would be discarded at the receiver. If the length of the guard interval is properly chosen such that it is longer than the time span of the channel, the OFDM symbol itself will not be distorted. Thus, by discarding the guard interval, the effects of intersymbol interference are thrown away as well.

FADING

Fading is deviation of the attenuation that a carrier-modulated telecommunication signal experiences over certain propagation media. The presence of reflectors in the environment surrounding a transmitter and receiver create multiple paths that a transmitted signal can traverse. As a result, the receiver sees the superposition of multiple copies of the transmitted signal, each traversing a different path. Each signal copy will experience differences in attenuation, delay and phase shift while travelling from the source to the receiver. This can result in either constructive or destructive interference, amplifying or attenuating the signal power seen at the receiver. Strong destructive interference is frequently referred to as a deep fade and may result in temporary failure of communication due to a severe drop in the channel signal-to-noise ratio.

FREQUENCY OFFSET

At start-up, the local oscillator (LO) frequency at the receiver is typically different from the LO frequency at the transmitter. Frequency offset is used to adjust the receivers LO frequency in order to match the transmitters LO frequency as closely as possible. The effect of having an LO frequency offset can be explained by Fourier Transform theory. The LO offset can be expressed mathematically by multiplying the received time-domain signal by a complex exponential whose frequency is equal to the LO offset amount. Recall from Fourier Transform theory that multiplication by a complex exponential in time is equivalent to a shift in frequency. The LO offset results in a frequency shift of the received signal spectrum. This shift causes a condition called loss of orthogonality to occur. The frequency shift causes the OFDM subcarriers to no longer be orthogonal. The effect of an LO frequency offset can be corrected by multiplying the signal by a correction factor. The correction factor would be a sinusoid with a frequency that is ideally equal to the amount of the LO frequency offset.

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF OFDM

ADVANTAGES: 1. Makes efficient use of the spectrum by allowing overlap. 2. By dividing the channel into narrowband flat fading sub channels, OFDM is more resistant to frequency selective fading than single carrier systems are. 3. Eliminates ISI and IFI through use of a cyclic prefix. 4. Using adequate channel coding and interleaving one can recover symbols lost due to the frequency selectivity of the channel. 5. Channel equalization becomes simpler than by using adaptive equalization techniques with single carrier systems. 6. It is possible to use maximum likelihood decoding with reasonable complexity. 7. OFDM is computationally efficient by using FFT techniques to implement the modulation and demodulation functions. 8. Is less sensitive to sample timing offsets than single carrier systems are. 9. Provides good protection against co channel interference and impulsive parasitic noise. DISADVANTAGES: 1. The OFDM signal has a noise like amplitude with a very large dynamic range; therefore it requires RF power amplifiers with a high peak to average power ratio. 2. It is more sensitive to carrier frequency offset and drift than single carrier systems are due to leakage of the DFT.

CONCLUSION

This project was a learning experience and we came across a completely new topic i.e. OFDM and now we are pretty clear about the basics of OFDM. OFDM techniques are quickly becoming a popular method for advanced communications networks. Advances in VLSI technology have made it possible to efficiently implement an FFT block in hardware. OFDM has been chosen for several current and future communications systems all over the world. It is wellsuited for systems in which the channel characteristics make it difficult to maintain adequate communications link performance.

FUTURE PROSPECTS

This project has given us a base for OFDM related study. Our future plans for this project are: 1. Learn about carrier prediction which will involve the study of estimation equations. 2. Designing and building an OFDM system on matlab. 3. Implementing matlab code for carrier prediction. 4. Reading about other OFDM related research papers and implementing other OFDM related topics.

REFERENCES
BOOKS: Modern Wireless Communications Simon Haykin and Michael Moher Multicarrier Techniques for 4G Mobile Communications Ramjee Prasad and Shinsuke Hara

RESEARCH PAPERS: An Introduction to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Marius Oltean Universitatea PolitehnicaTimi oara

WEBSITES: www.rfdesign.com ieeexplore.ieee.org www.xatlantis.ch