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Transmission And Reception of the Multicarrier CDMA Signals In the 3rd Generation Mobile Communication System
Hanna Bogucka, IEEE Member
Abstract- In t h e paper t h e possibility of applying t h e Multi-carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) technique in t h e 3rd generation mobile cellular communication system is analyzed. T h e key features of such a system are described and t h e basic problems of transmission and reception of t h e MC-CDMA signals are discussed.

I. INTRODUCTION The MC-CDMA is a novel digital modulation and multiplexing technique. I t has been proposed for the indoor wireless communications [2]. For these systems reception techniques have been discussed in [3]. In [6] this modulation/multiplexing scheme has been also proposed for the multimedia cellular systems, however no reception techniques have been analysed. In this paper it will be shown that MC-CDMA is very suitable for the future 3rd generation Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS). One of the demands specified for the UMTS is the wide range of applications. This calls for covering wide range of bit rates (from several Mbit/s for HDTV or WLAN to several kbit/s) transmitted with various quality (bit error rates) [l],[6]. As we shall see the MC-CDMA can satisfy this demand in a very flexible manner. In Section I1 the MC-CDMA technique is described and its advantages are discussed in detail. In Section I11 the duality of MC-CDMA and the conventional direct sequence CDMA systems is prooved. In Section IV the main problems of the reception of the MC-CDMA signals are taken into account. Section V contains the considerations on the chanel estimation and equalization. Finally, in Section VI conclusions are derrived. 11. COMBINING CDMA WITH OFDM TECHNIQUE
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h ( N - 1) Fig. 1. Realization of MC-CDMA in the transmitter of a single user

Frequency Division Multiplex). The guard time or the circular prefix should be introduced for each symbol in order to combat the transients and the intersymbol interference caused by the channel and filters in the system. The circular prefix consists of p - 1 repeated samples from the IFFT output (where p is the length of the channel impulse response or the delay spread measured in samples). At the output of IFFT the pulse shaping filter followed by a modulator which shifts the whole spectrum to the desirable frequency band can be applied. Another solution is t o apply the offset IFFT what eliminates the necessity of the above mentioned frequency shift. The OFDM-CDMA transmitter for the base station is presented in Figure 2.

The MC-CDMA transmitter for a single user is shown in Figure 1. The binary data am(k) are first multiplied by the pseudo noise (PN) binary seqence sm(i)what is called spreading. The bit duration T is much longer then the PN sequence chip duration T,. For example N = may be equal to 128 or higher. After the neccesary encoding (which has not been shown openly in Figure 1) the sequence that corresponds to one data bit is modulated in the bank of N modulators. Another possibility is to map this sequence into N/2 complex values, which are then modulated in the QPSK modulator with N/2 subcarriers. The very efficient way of realizing such a modulation scheme is the Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT). For the orthogonality of the signals at the output of IFFT the distance between subcarriers should be equal to the chip rate or its multiple. This modulation is often called OFDM (Orthogonal

user #I

N-1

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Fig. 2. MC-CDMA transmitterfor a base station; C P - circular prefix, P/S - parallel to serial conversion, PSF - pulse shaping filter

H. Bogucka is with the Institute of Electronics and Communications, Poznari University of Technology, u . Piotrowo 3A, 60-965 l Pozn&, Poland.

After spreading chips in the same position in the users unique P N sequences are added. The result of this summation is a composite sequence which then undergoes the multicarrier modulation by the means of IFFT. Every chip in this composite sequence correspods to one frequency bin. The circular prefix is attached to every block of N samples.

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Finally, the signal is filtered in a pulse shaping filter. In the case described above every chip occupies one frequency bin, however it not necessarily has to be so. If a user has the lower chip rate he can use the more appropriate (smaller) can be utinumber of frequency bins. The remaining lized by other users. The I F F T order has t o be at least as high as the highest number of chips per bit for a single user. Moreover, IFFT order should be high enough to ensure that the overhead caused by the circular prefix was possibly small:
NBp-1 (1) There is also the upper limit for the block length N at the IFFT output. It will be derrived in Section IV. Figure 2 shows that spreading by the use of code division multiplexing and multicarrier modulation are the two independent processes in the transmitter. Spreading ensures the extraction of the information transmitted to and from every user at the receiver. Application of the CDMA technique simplifies the frequency planning in cells. Multicarrier modulation supports the wide range of bit rates and service qualities (bit error rates). The later facility can be obtained by applying not equal but the adequate transmission power to every user to fulfil the requirement for his bit error rate. Furthermore, the spectral efficiency in case of the OFDM is close to 100 % and is better than in case of the conventional Direct Sequence CDMA. Another advantage of the MC-CDMA technique applied in the mobile communication system is that the information carried by one bit is spread over several subcarriers. If the number of subcarriers and the distance between them is properly chosen it is unlikely that all of them would be located in the deep fade. Making use of the frequency diversity is also t y p ical for the conventional Direct Sequence CDMA, however the joint detection and the interference removal is possible only for a very limited number of interfering users. In MC-CDMA this problem can be overcome if the appropriate IFFT order is applied and only the users that are alowed to interfere use the same frequency bins.

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user #x PN seqences) --% N-1

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PN sequence source (N chips per bit)

Fig. 3. a) MC-CDMA transmitter for a base station (equivalent structure), b) the Structure of a spreading block;s / P serid to pardel conversion

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111. DUALITY OF

THE

MC-CDMA A N D DS-CDMA
SYSTEMS

in which the nonbinary] complex valued PN sequences have been applied. An important difference between these two multiplexing/modulation scheems is the envelope of a single user signal. The DS-CDMA ensures the constant envelope for a single user while MC-CDMA does not. However, as the number of users increases this difference vanishes and there is not a constant envelope of the composite signal in both cases. This has an influence on the required dynamics of the applied A/D and D/A converters. The application of the linear power amplifiers in the MC-CDMA system is also necessary. This is a problem for the considered radio system since most mobile radio products are designed with the very efficient class-C power amplifiers which are highly nonlinear. The duality of the MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA systems allows t o foreseen the similar performance. I v . BASIC PROBLEMS
O F THE RECEPTION

For the simplicity of the considerations let us assume that in Figure 2 every user utilizes N frequency bins that is every user has the same bit and chip rates. Because IFFT and the summation are the linear operations they can be exchanged in their positions so that IFFT was performed first on every sequence of N chips appearing at the output of a spreading block. The sequences of s w p l e s at the output of IFFT can be then summed t o create the composite signal. The bit duration measured in chips is as long as IFFT order. Thus, it acts like a constant which is multiplied by N chips at the input of IFFT. We can therefore perform IFFT on the N chips of the PN sequence first and then multiply the result by the current bit. Such a structure of the base station transmitter is shown in Figure 3. It is clear that in principle the MC-CDMA system can be r e garded as the conventional Direct Seqence CDMA system

In the considered system many users can use the same frequency band (the same subcarriers). They can be distingiushed by their unique P N codes. Obviously,to correct for the effects of the multipath channel the equalization has t o be performed. It can be done after demodulation and before despreading. There are various possibilities for the adaptive receiver, the adaptive equalizer and the adaptive discrete matched filter (ADMF) among them. The later method applies adaptive channel estimation te the chip duration is short enough to resolve paths we can take advantage of the in-band di DSCDMA system a receiver that optimally combines the multipath components as part of the decision process is reffered to as a RAKE receiver. To equalize the received

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signal the delay and the amplitudes of the channel paths have to be estimated in case of the noncoherent detection. When the coherent detection is done in the receiver the path phases have t o be estimated as well. The basic structure of the MC-CDMA mobile station receiver is presented in Figure 4. well solved in this system [5]. Another problem of the signal reception in case of the uplink transmission is that the signals comming from the different users are not synchronized in time. In the receiver the possibility of the synchronization loss in frequency has to be taken into account as well. The signal comming from each user suffers from the loss of orthogonality of the subband signals because of the interchannel interference (ICI) present in the transmission channel. Obviously, IC1 for every user may have different range and should be cancelled separately. Thus, the problem of channel estimation for the uplink in the considered system is rather complex.

CPR,

FFT

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V. CONSIDERATIONS ON EQUALIZATION

As it was previously mentioned in both the uplink and downlink transmission the channel adaptive equalizer or the ADMF has t o be applied, however in the uplink case N- 1 N- 1 far more channels have to be estimated from the equivalent portion of the received signal as compared with the downFig. 4. MC-CDMA receiver for a mobile station; RF - receive fil- link case. Therefore the equalizer for the base station reter, CPR - circular prefix removing, EQ - equalization (adaptive ceiver is much more complex and may perform worse than eqalizer or ADMF) the one in the mobile station. In order t o calculate the estimate of the rapidly changing channel impulse response The receiver for the base station consists of the same properly the training sequence has to be employed not only blocks as thouse from Figure 4, however after FFT N val- a t the beginning of the transmisssion but also the periodic ues from its output are fed t o 2 branches (one branch for transmission of some training bits (like it is in the GSM syseach user). An equalizer and despreading block is applied tem: the midamble in each frame) is necessary. The equalin every branch to equalize the users individual channel ization may be based on the inverse filter or on the matched and multiply the received signal by the users unique PN filter (ADMF) and it can be realized in the time or in the code. frequency domain. The matched filter a t the input of the Let us consider the application of the adaptive equalizer receiver can be considered as the maximal-ratio diversity or ADMF at the receiver input. Its coefficients are calcu- combiner for the diversity channel in this sense that the lated adaptively according t o the adequate algorithm. For multipath signals (the diversity components) are weighted the correct operation of the applied adaptive filter one has and summed to compose the one-path, interference-free sigto assume that during these calculations, that is during nal. This method provides the optimum post-demodulation the duration of the block of N samples, the channel char- SNR for the received signal which is made up of diveracteristic remains unchanged. The channel changes depend sity components and optimum performance in the available most of all (but not only) on the vehicles speed. Thus, the bandwidth. The estimation of the channel impulse response duration of a single block must be much smaller than the is necessary to calculate the above mentioned filter coeffiinverse of the maximum Doppler frequency. Consequently cients. This can be done in a few ways. The proposition the upper limit for the I F F T order applied in the transmit- for the efficient way to estimate the single user channel at ter is specified by formula 2. the base station is presented in Figure 5. In this case the channel estimation is realized in time domain. N < < -f c After despreading and transformation t o the time dofD main the received sequences are windowed. The size of this where fc is the chip rate and fD is the maximum Doppler window depends on the accepted maximum delay spread. frequency. Paths delayed more than this spread (e.g. more than 25 ps) The problem of the signal reception in the considered are neglected. After windowing the values in the sequences system is different for the mobile station receiver (in case are averaged over a certain number of received blocks. This of downlink) and for the base station receiver (uplink). It number is the size of store buffer (storing block) in Figis clear that the channel equalization for the downlink is ure 5. It should be chosen high enough t o ensure the proper much easier than for the Qplink. The mobile receiver is to estimation of the channel paths in the presence of several estimate only one channel from a certain portion of the re- interferers (other users using the same frequency bins). Afceived signal. In case of the uplink as many channpls have ter averaging we obtain the raugh estimation of the channel to be estimated from the equivalent portion of the signal as paths as several pulses delayed in time. From thouse pulses there are users. One should note that the downlink OFDM we choose only the highest ones and we neglect the rest transmission will be employed in the Digital Audio Broad- of them. The highest peaks form the estimate of the chancasting (DAB). The problem of the channel estimation is nel impulse response. After FFT we obtain N values of

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the channel equalization in the uplink transmission is concerned. The proposition to solve this problem has been presented in the previous section.) Thcs, because MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA are the dual systems the optimal receiver for the considered system is a R A K E receiver which applies the ADMF with the maximal-ratio diversity combiner. The channel estimation method proposed in this paper is very simple and not computationaly complex.

REFERENCES
S. Chia, The Universal Mobile Telecommunication System, IEEE Communications Magazine, pp. 54-62, Dec. 1992 [2] N. Yee, J-P. Linnartz, G. Fettweis, Multi-Carrier CDMA in Indoor Wireless Radio Networks, IEICE Trans. Commun., Vol. E77-B, NO. 7, July 1994, pp. 900-904 [3] N. Yee, J-P. Linnartz, Controlled Equalization of Multi-Carrier CDMA in an Indoor Rician Fading Channel, 43 IEEE/VTS Vehicular Technology Conference, June 7-10, 1994, Stockholm, Sweden, vol. 3, pp. 1665-1669 [4] G. Fettweis, A S . Bahai, K. Anvari, On Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA) Modem Design, 43 IEEE/VTS Vehicular Technology Conference, June 7-10, 1994, Stockholm, Sweden, vol. 3, pp. 1670-1674 [5] J.C. Rault, D. Castelain, B. Le Floch, The Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM) Technique and Its Application to Digital Radio Broadcasting Towards Mobile Receivers, GLOBECOM89,pp. 428-432 [SI V. Aue, G.P. Fettweis, H. Nuszkowski, A Multiple-Access Scheme for Multimedia Cellular Systems, 40. Internationales Wissenschaftliches Kolloquium, 18-21 Sept. 1995, Ilmenau, Germany, pp. 55-60,

[I]

Fig. 5 . Time domain realization of the channel estimation at the MC-CDMA base station receiver

the estimate of the channel frequency response. These values are used to calculate the coefficients of the filter which constitutes the ADMF in frequency domain. This means that the block of N received samples from the output of FFT applied in the receiver are multiplied by N filter coefficients. It is also possible to apply this filter before FFT in the receiver, that is in time domain. In this case the channel estimation is performed in the same way as described above, however it is not necessary t o transform the estimate of the channel impulse response t o the frequency domain after cutting out peaks block. The values of this estimate are used to calculate the ADMF coefficients and the filtering is realized in time domain by the cyclic convolution of N received samples with N coefficients. The initial simulation results show that the application of the above described algorithm results in a very accurate estimation of the path delay, however the paths amplitudes are estimated only raughly. The big advantege of this method is its simplicity and the low computational complexity. V I . CONCLUSIONS It has been shown that the multicarrier CDMA technique satisfies many of the requirements that have been specified for the future 3rd generation wireless communication system. It allows to utilize the frequency resources in a very flexible manner. It supports a wide range of users data rates and various required bit error rates. These advantages are very desirable for the multimedia applications. Furthermore, MC-CDMA transmission is very resistant to frequency fading. The realization of the MC-CDMA modem is very efficient because the multicarrier modulation and demodulation is performed through the efficient IFFT and FFT algorithms. It has been prooved that MC-CDMA system can be regarded as the conventional DS-CDMA system in which the nonbinary, complex PN sequences have been applied. All these features and the well known advantages of DS-CDMA allow to consider this technique as a potential solution for users multiplexing and modulation in the future Universal Mobile Telecommunication System. There is still an open question as far as the realization of

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