Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

(OFDM): Concept and System-Modeling

Klaus Witrisal

Signal Processing and Speech Communication Lab

Technical University Graz, Austria

VL: Mobile Radio Systems, Ch. 5: “Wideband Systems”

24-Nov-05
 Outline

• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
 What is OFDM?

• Modulation technique
– Requires channel coding
– Solves multipath problems

Transmitter:
I/Q RF
Source Channel OFDM I/Q-mod.,
Info coding coding / modulation up-
Source interleaving converter

e.g. Audio 0110 01101101 Radio-

Receiver: PSD channel
PSD
f f
Source Decoding / OFDM de- *
Down-
Info decoding deinter- modulation converter,
-fc fc
Sink leaving I/Q-demod.
I/Q RF
 Multipath Propagation

• Reflections from walls, • Time dispersive channel

etc. – Impulse response:

p ( ) (PDP)

 [ns]

• Problem with high rate data

transmission:
– inter-symbol-interference

Multipath Radio Channel

 Inter-Symbol-Interference

Transmitted signal:

Received Signals:
Line-of-sight:

Reflected:

The symbols add up

on the channel Delays
 Distortion!

Multipath Radio Channel

Caractéristiques du canal
 Outline

• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
 Concept of parallel transmission (1)
Channel impulse
response Time

1 Channel (serial)

Channels are transmitted

2 Channels at different frequencies
(sub-carriers)

8 Channels
In practice: 50 … 8000
Channels (sub-carriers)

OFDM Technology
 The Frequency-Selective Radio Channel
Power response [dB]
20

15

10

-5

-10

Frequency

• Interference of reflected (and LOS) radio waves

– Frequency-dependent fading

Multipath Radio Channel

 Concept of parallel transmission (2)
Channel impulse Channel
response Time
Frequency
transfer function

1 Channel (serial) Signal is

Frequency
“broadband”

2 Channels Frequency

8 Channels
Frequency

Channels are
“narrowband”

OFDM Technology
 Concept of an OFDM signal
Ch.1 Ch.2 Ch.3 Ch.4 Ch.5 Ch.6 Ch.7 Ch.8 Ch.9 Ch.10

Conventional multicarrier techniques frequency

Ch.2 Ch.4 Ch.6 Ch.8 Ch.10

Ch.1 Ch.3 Ch.5 Ch.7 Ch.9

Saving of bandwidth

50% bandwidth saving

Orthogonal multicarrier techniques frequency

Implementation and Syste

m Model
 Outline

• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
 Generating the OFDM signal (1)
• Symbol (QPSK) of sub-carrier i at time k
– Other symbol-alphabets can be used as well (BPSK, m-QAM)
• Baseband signal is generated by DSP

s BB ,i ,k (t )  w(t  kT )  xi ,k  exp j 2 if (t  kT )

Window function Sub-carrier

xi,k Im

Re
 Spectrum of the modulated data symbols
Magnitude
• Rectangular Window
of duration T0 T0
• Has a sinc-spectrum
with zeros at 1/ T0

• Other carriers are put

in these zeros
  sub-carriers are
Frequency
orthogonal

N sub-carriers:
N 1
sBB ,k (t )  w(t  kT )  i ,k
x
i 0
e j 2 if ( t  kT )
resembles
IDFT!
 Generating the OFDM signal (2)
x0,k s0,k
serial-to- x1,k IDFT s1,k parallel-
xn parallel to-serial sn
(IFFT)

xN-1,k sN-1,k

N data symbols: Base-band

(in frequency- signal
domain) xi,k Im (time-domain)

Re
 Idea of Guard Interval (GI)
Insertion of guard interval (cyclic prefix): 1 OFDM symbol

FFT-part

Channel impulse response (shorter than GI): time

Cyclic convolution of transmitted signal

with channel impulse response
 multiplication in frequency-domain

Introduction
 Amélioration OFDM

Une communication « normale » aurait besoin de répéter l’intervalle

de garde après chaque symbole alors qu’en OFDM, cet intervalle
n’est ajouté qu’après un symbole OFDM (des milliers de symboles
d’information).

Delay Delay
GT OFDM Symbol GT OFDM Symbol
Delay Delay Delay Delay
GT SYM GT SYM GT SYM GT SYM
 OFDM System Model
• Multiplication of data symbols with (complex-valued)
channel transfer-function:
h-N/2,k n-N/2,k
x-N/2,k y-N/2,k

yi  xi hi  ni
hN/2-1,k nN/2-1,k
xN/2-1,k yN/2-1,k

Introduction
 OFDM Block Diagram
Transmitter
I/Q I/Q
Channel Symbol OFDM Guard
coding / mapping modulation interval
interleaving (modulation) (IFFT)

OFDM spectrum for NFFT = 128, Nwin = 12, Nguard = 24, oversampling = 1
0110 010101001

power spectrum magnitude [dB]

10 N symbols
0
-10
1 OFDM symbol
-20
Receiver -30
-40 FFT-part
Decoding / symbol de--50
-60 -40OFDM -20 0 Guard
20 40 60
deinter- mapping demod. f [MHz] interval
time domain signal (baseband)
leaving (detection)
0.2 (FFT) removal
Channel 0.1 I/Q I/Q
impulse
Channel response:
est. Time sync. time
0

-0.1 imaginary
real
-0.2
Introduction
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
sample nr.
 Interprétation de l’OFDM

Considérons un système de transmission mono-antenne sur un canal

multi-trajets :
La réponse impulsionnelle du canal s’étend sur L+1 symboles: 0, 1, …, L

x(n) y(n)
Canal
h(n)
L
y ( n )  x ( n ) * h ( n)   h ( m ) x ( n  m)
m 0
L
y (n  1)  x(n  1) * h(n)   h(m) x(n  m  1)
m0
L
y ( n  M )  x ( n  M ) * h ( n)   h ( m) x ( n  m  M )
m 0
 La mise en matrice
 x ( n) 
 y ( n)  h0 h1 hL 0  0  x(n  1) 
 y (n  1)  0 h h h  0  
   0 1 L
  
    0 0    0  x(n  M ) 
 y (n  M  1) 0  h h hL 0   
   0 1   x(n  M  1) 
 y (n  M )  M 11  0 0  h0 h1 hL  M 1M 1 L  
 x ( n  M  L )  M 1 L1

Maintenant imaginer que nous avion ajouté un préfix cyclique au vecteur

d’entrée, c’est-à-dire que les

x(n  M  1)  x(n) , ... , x(n  M  L)  x(n  1  L)

On a donc ajouté L points (taille du filtre – 1) au début de la séquence.

 Re-écriture matricielle

 y ( n)   h0 h1 hL 0  0  x ( n) 
 y (n  1)  0 h0 h1 hL  0  x(n  1) 
     
   0     0   
 y (n  M  1) h  0 0 h0 h1   x(n  M  1)
   L   
 y (n  M )  M 11  h1 hL  0 0 h0  M 1M 1  x(n  M )  M 11

Matrice circulante

Propriété: Soit h une matrice circulante, W matrice de la FFT et WH

la matrice de IFFT. WhWH est une matrice diagonale avec des
éléments sur le diagonal étant la FFT de la première ligne de la
matrice h.
 Pré-codage
Exploitons cette propriété pour dé-convoluer le signal et le canal.

Imaginez que le vecteur de symboles d’information X de taille N (ou

M+1) est à envoyer sur un canal multi-trajets.

On applique une IFFT avant d’envoyer sur le canal, puis on ajoute un

préfixe cyclique. La taille du vecteur à envoyer est maintenant N+Ng où
Ng<L.

Les N derniers échantillons reçus forme le vecteur y. On peut écrire

X  le vecteur d' information
x  W H X  le vecteur effectivement envoyé (la IFFT de x)
y  hx  hW H X  le vecteur effectivement reçu
 En réception

On applique un FFT sur le signal reçu

Y  Wy  Whx  WhW H X  HX  diag  FFT du canal X

x(n) y(n)

Alors OFDM n’est qu’un précodage qui permet de diagonaliser un canal

multi-trajets.
 N canaux parallèles indépendants

Y0  X 0 H 0  n0

Y1  X 1 H1  n1

YN 1  X N 1 H N 1  nN 1

La capacité équivalent est la somme des capacités individuelles.

Water-Filling peut être utilisé en émission si on connaît le canal en

émission.
 Outline

• Introduction
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM System Design
– Parameter selection
– Implementation Issues

• Summary and Applications

 Design of an OFDM System
Data rate;
modulation
order
Channel Guard x(4 … 10) FFT
Nr. of
impulse interval symbol
carriers
response length length

Channel
Parameters
are needed Other constraints:
•Nr. of carriers should match FFT size
and data packet length
•considering coding and modulation schemes

Introduction
 OFDM Symbol Configuration (1)
Transmitter pulse prototype w(t)
T
Twin Tguard TFFT

Prefix effective TX-time Postfix time

kT
Channel impulse response

 excess delay time

max
Receiver filter (implemented by FFT)

TFFT time

OFDM System Design

Spectral Shaping by Windowing

OFDM System Design

 OFDM Symbol Configuration (2)

• Not all FFT-points can be used for data carriers

– Lowpass filters for AD- and DA-conversion
• oversampling required
– DC offsets; carrier feedtrough; etc.

Transfer function of
transmitter/receiver

frequency
–fs/2 DC fs/2
useable sub-carriers useable sub-carriers
sub-carrier
–N/2, … …, –1, 0, 1, … …, N/2–1
index i

Design of an OFDM Syste

m
 Outline

• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
 Advantages of OFDM

• Solves the multipath-propagation problem

– Simple equalization at receiver
• Computationally efficient
– For broadband systems more efficient than SC
• Supports several multiple access schemes
– TDMA, FDMA, MC-CDMA, etc.
• Supports various modulation schemes
– Adaptability to SNR of sub-carriers is possible
• Elegant framework for MIMO-systems
– All interference among symbols is removed
 Problems of OFDM (Research Topics)
time domain signal (baseband)
0.2

• Synchronization issues: 0.1

– Time synchronization 0
• Find start of symbols
-0.1 imaginary
– Frequency synchr. real
-0.2
• Find sub-carrier positions 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200
sample nr.
• Non-constant power amplitude
envelope
– Linear amplifiers needed

• Channel estimation:
– To retrieve data
– Channel is time-variant
frequency

f frequency offset

OFDM Technology
 Correlation-based Frequency-sync.
• Correlation of duplicated parts of OFDM signal
– e.g.: Cyclic prefix (Guard interval - GI):

Guard interval FFT-part

si: (M samples) (L samples)

... conj. … (M times)

conj.
M 1 ...
• Peak at optimum position
Popt   i ri  L
r *
 • Phase  frequency-offset
i 0

• Received signal with f-offset: ri  si exp( j 2 f i / N )

– Constant phase offset between samples spaced by L

Introduction
 Outline

• Introduction
– What is OFDM?
– Multipath fading radio-channel
• Principle of OFDM
• OFDM Implementation and System Model
• Advantages and Disadvantages
• OFDM in Practice
• Summary
 Applications of OFDM

• Wireless LAN
– IEEE802.11a/g
– HYPERLAN

• DAB, DVB, etc.

– Digital Audio/Video Broadcasting

• xDSL (Digital Subscriber Line)

– uses Discrete Multitone (DMT)

Summary and Applications

 Summary – Essential “Ingredients”

• IFFT & FFT

– For efficient implementation

• Guard interval insertion

– Obtaining simple equalization
– Removing all IS- & IC-interferences

• Error correction coding

– To restore bits that are lost on weak sub-carriers