2016 Intl. Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), Sept.
21-24, 2016, Jaipur, India
GFDM/OQAM Implementation under Rician
Fading Channel
Shravan Kumar Bandari
Electronics & Communication Engineering Electronics & Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology National Institute of Technology
Warangal, India-506004
Email: shravnbandari@nitw.ac.in Email: vvmani@nitw.ac.in
AbstractFuture wireless applications demand a high data
rate per user, low latency, spectral efciency and high connection
density. One of the contenders for 5G, Generalized Frequency Di-
vision Multiplexing (GFDM), seems to serve the next generation
wireless needs due to its attractive properties when compared to
the existing cyclic prex orthogonal FDM (CP-OFDM). Never-
theless, due to the inherent non-orthogonal nature of the scheme,
GFDM may introduce intersymbol and intercarrier interference
(ISI/ICI). For better spectral efcient transmission with improved
orthogonality, we explored in this article the well known Offset
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OQAM) multicarrier sig-
naling technique as applied to the GFDM system. In particular
we investigated the GFDM/OQAM system model under Rician-K
fading channel conditions providing the corresponding analytical
expressions. The model performance is evaluated in terms of the
Symbol Error Rate (SER) and the results are seen to improve
upon conventional GFDM.
Index TermsGFDM, OQAM, Rician-K, Symbol Error Rate.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Future wireless envisioned needs with an increased number
of available portable devices require higher bandwidth, low
latency and higher speed data services. Applications like
machine to machine (M2M) communications and Internet of
Things (IoT) should work seamlessly. Developers are working
on new signalling techniques that will feature improvements
in both frequency containment and time allocation in 5th
generation wireless communication systems (5G), which will
focus on such aforementioned applications. By preserving the
advantages of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM), which is one of the most popular multicarrier (MC)
modulation techniques, the goal is to correct its drawbacks.
OFDM is accepted in many current standards in high-
rate wireless systems. It transforms a non-at and wide-
band frequency selective channel into a number of parallel,
narrow-band, at fading subchannels, in order to combat
multipath effects [1]. Despite its attractive properties, it is still
questionable whether OFDM can serve the increasing demand
for high data rates and low latency applications. In fact, some
of the OFDM drawbacks like high peak-to-average-power-
ratio (PAPR), high out-of-band (OOB) emission, and inter-
carrier-interference (ICI), motivated the search for a new MC
technique.
978-1-5090-2029-4/16/$31.00 @2016 IEEE
V.V. Mani A. Drosopoulos
Electrical Engineering
TEI Western Greece
Warangal, India-506004 Patras, Greece-26334
Email: drosop@teiwest.gr
Generalised Frequency Division Multiplexing (GFDM) is
one of the new MC candidates proposed by [2]. It is a
method that is actively researched and covers both single-
carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) and OFDM
as special cases. For an in-depth tutorial exposure, please turn
to [2], [3]. GFDM uses a special block based structure and
low latency applications such as IoT and M2M can benet
from it greatly.
Conventional GFDM uses cyclic prex (CP) which reduces
spectral efciency and increases power consumption. Due to
non-orthogonality, ISI and ICI issues are expected to appear.
According to the Balian-Low theorem [4] we cannot achieve
simultaneously both an optimally localised pulse and orthog-
onality without CP. With the offset modulation scheme we
can achieve near orthogonality on real values of the complex
QAM symbols. More insights on OQAM and its application
to OFDM can be found in [5]. This article investigates the
application of OQAM to conventional GFDM. It is expected
that the overall system will show an improved Symbol Error
Rate (SER) performance.
We further propose an improved orthogonal GFDM system
by exploring the near orthogonality properties of OQAM.
In particular, we investigate system performance under the
Rician-K fading channel, provide analytical expressions and
compare the analytical performance with simulations. The
effects of the fading parameter K and the roll-off factor ()
are also studied.
Section II of this paper introduces the GFDM/OQAM
system model. Section III analyzes the theoretical SER ex-
pressions of GFDM/OQAM assuming zero-forcing (ZF) in
the case of the Rician-K fading channel. Section IV presents
results and discussions, and section V is the conclusion.
II. GFDM/OQAM SIGNAL MODEL
GFDM is a non-orthogonal based multi carrier technique
that consists of N signal subcarriers with M subsymbols in
each block. A concept called tail biting ltering is imple-
mented for each subcarrier that allows efcient use of cyclic
prex (CP) and cyclic sufx (CS) padding, thus providing a
spectrum efcient transmission. More insights on conventional
GFDM using QAM structure can be found in [2], [3]. In this
article we propose a GFDM implementation with OQAM.
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 2016 Intl. Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), Sept. 21-24, 2016, Jaipur, India

This GFDM/OQAM implementation uses complex P -QAM B. Channel Model

(P = 2 ) mapping and an offset of N/2 samples in the The received signal after propagation through the wireless
time domain between in-phase and quadrature components, channel can be modelled as,
resulting in an efcient reduction of ICI/ISI with proper lter
design. In GFDM/OQAM, pulse shape orthogonality can be r = Hx + w (3)
achieved without further need of cyclic prex which in turn  
where H = circ h is the circulant channel transfer matrix
increases spectral efciency. Fig.1 is a block diagram depiction
of this papers proposed GFDM/OQAM scheme. convolved with h, the channel impulse response vector zero-
padded to the same length as the data x. In this article, the
A. Transmitter Model channel under consideration a is Rician fading channel with
2
fading parameter K. The vector w CN (0, w IN M ) contains
Instead of using complex baseband symbols as is typical in
complex additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with variance
QAM based systems, in GFDM/OQAM we have real valued 2
w and IN M is the order N M identity matrix. The individual
symbols that are modulated by a QAM offset. These are
elements of the received signal r(n) of r are r(n) = x(n)
transmitted on each sub-carrier, employing the synthesis basis
h(n) + w(n), where is the convolution operator and h(n)
functions that are obtained by time-frequency translation of a
is the fading channel impulse response. When the channel is
prototype function as follows [5], [6]:
AWGN, h(n) = 1 or equivalently H = I.
 Lp 1 
mN j2i
n 2
gi,m (n) = g[(n ) mod N M ]e N (1) C. Receiver Model
2
Channel equalization at the receiver can be carried out in
where n = 0, 1, ...N M 1, gi,m (n) is the shifted version of the frequency domain as [2],
the prototype lter g(n) in time and frequency, i stands for the  
subcarrier index and m for the subsymbol index. The tail biting FFT(r)
y = IFFT (4)
ltering can be done by a circular shift operation provided FFT(h)
by a modulo operation in the above equation. The complex where FFT(.) is the Fast Fourier Transform and IFFT(.) is the
exponential is the phase component introduced by the delay Inverse Fast Fourier Transform. The estimated data vector d,
of the lter which also performs the corresponding shifting from the received and equalized signal can be written as,
operation in frequency. The length of the prototype lter is
Lp and the modulator output of the discrete time baseband d = By (5)
GFDM/OQAM, is written as:
The matrix B under Matched Filter (MF), Zero Forcing (ZF)
M
K1 1
 and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) receivers are given
x(n) = ai (m)gi,m (n)ejm,i (2) as follows [3],
i=0 m=0
MF: BMF = AH
where n = 0, 1, ...N M 1, ai (m) is the real data that
1 H
ZF: BZF = AH A A
is obtained from the real and imaginary parts of the QAM  2 1
constellation and the i,k = (i+m)
2 term in the exponential MMSE: BMMSE =
w H
I+A A AH (6)
ejm,i enforces a 90 phase difference in time and frequency d2
between the real data ai (m). 2
where w is the noise variance and d2 is the data symbols
variance.
Real Prepro-
Data P-QAM cessing GFDM III. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS
modulator
source mapper Imag Delay Prepro- wireless
N/2 channel The analytical expressions for GFDM/OQAM under the
cessing
Rician fading channel are presented in this section.
OQAM Mapper Unit The noise enhancement factor (NEF) , is given by [2],
channel estimation
and synchronization
1
KM

2

Data
sink
OQAM Demapper Detector GFDM
demodulator FDE = [BZF ]i,n (7)
Unit ZF
n=0

Fig. 1. Block diagram of transceiver
In matrix form, the transmitted baseband signal can be
expressed as, x = Ad. A is an N M N M transmitter mod-
ulation matrix that contains all the modulation steps involved.
This matrix A is contructed similar to the one proposed in
[3] and d, a data vector of size N M 1, is the stack of all
elements from the OQAM mapping unit.
This quanties the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) reduction in the
case of the ZF receiver over a at fading channel.
The values of are equal for any subcarrier index i . Both
NEF and Ns , the number of OQAM samples per symbol,
modify the equivalent SNR for GFDM/OQAM at the receiver
side. Therefore, the symbol error rate (SER) performance of
both GFDM and GFDM/OQAM, under AWGN, differ in the
equivalent SNR.

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 2016 Intl. Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), Sept. 21-24, 2016, Jaipur, India

The GFDM/OQAM SER expression for the case of AWGN

0
is given by [2]. The equivalent SNR is related to the factor 10
Ns as:
   2
p1 p1
PAW GN (e) = 2 erfc( ) erfc2 ( )

Symbol Error Rate (SER)

p p 10
-1
(8)
where (ii)

3RT Ns Es
= (9) 10-2 (i)
2(2 1) N0
GFDM/OQAM sim, K=1
and GFDM/OQAM theory, K=1
NM GFDM/QAM sim, K=1
RT = (10)
N M + NCP + NCS GFDM/QAM theory, K=1
10-3
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
is the number of bits per QAM symbol, p = 2 , NCP Es/N0 in [dB]
and NCS are the length of the cyclic prex and cyclic sufx
respectively, N and M indicate the corresponding number Fig. 2. Comparing GFDM SER with OQAM and QAM under Rician-K
fading channel with K=1, = 0.1
of subcarriers and subsymbols, Es is the average energy per
symbol and N0 is the noise power density. The factor Ns has
the value 2 for OQAM and 1 for QAM. where
The symbol error rate in an ensemble of fading channels  q
can be determined by averaging the error rates for the AWGN 1 + K K  1 K(1 + K)
I1 (r ) = e
channel over the probability density function of the SNR in r q=0
(q!)2 r
the different fading channels given by:
(q + 3/2) 3 1+K
 2 F1 [q + 1, q + ; q + 2; ( )] (15)
(q + 1) 2 r
P (e) = PAW GN (e)P ()d (11)
0
Kq 

4  ((1 + K)/r )j
q

where the P () for the Rician fading channel is given (12). I2 (r ) = eK 1

q=0
(q!) j=0 2j + 1
The probability density function under the Rician fading
 1 3 1+K 
channel is given by [7], 2 F1 j + , j + 1; j + ; ( + 1) (16)
2 2 r
    and r is the equivalent SNR under Rician fading channel
1+K (1 + K) + K
P () = exp given by

  3RT 2 Ns Es
r = r
4K(1 + K) (2 1) N0
I0 ;0 K < (12)
where we have assumed a Rician channel with parameter
r2 = 1/2 for SER performance and 2 F1 [., .; .; ] is the Gauss
where K is the Rician parameter and is the average SNR
hypergeometric function [9]. A similar kind of derivation of
per bit.
equation (14) was attempted by the authors in [10] and more
Expressing the innite series representation of the
insights about the derivation can be found there. As mentioned
zeroth-order modied Bessel function [8], I0 (x) =
  x 2 q earlier, the number of OQAM samples per symbol Ns will
q=0 4 /(q!)2 , the PDF of (12) can be modied as: make a difference in the SER performance.
 q
1 + K K  1 K(1 + K) IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
P () = e
r q=0
(q!)2 r The results of our simulations are presented in this section
  along with a comparison with the theoretical expressions for
(1 + K)
q exp ;0 K < (13) the ZF receiver case. The system parameters that were utilized
r for simulations are shown in Table I.
Substituting equations (8) and (13) in (11) we have the nal In Fig. 2 we see the simulation results and analytical com-
SER expression for the Rician fading channel as: putations of GFDM using the QAM and OQAM techniques.
The parameters under consideration are: Rician fading factor
 2
2(p 1) p1 K = 1, roll-off factor = 0.1 and modulation order = 4.
PRic () = I1 (r ) I2 (r ) (14) Curve (i) shows the GFDM-OQAM system performance
p p

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 2016 Intl. Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), Sept. 21-24, 2016, Jaipur, India

TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS

Description Parameter Value

Number of Subcarriers N 64
Number of time slots M 5
Pulse shape lter g RRC
Roll-off factor {0.1, 0.5, 0.9}
Length of CP NCP 0
Modulation order 2,4,5,6,7

100

10-1
Symbol Error Rate (SER)

(i)
10-2
Sim, K=0 Fig. 5. SER performance under Rician channel with K=2, = 0.5 for various
(ii)
Theory, K=0
Sim, K=1 (iii)
Theory, K=1
10-3 Sim, K=2 (iv)
Theory, K=2
SNR of 24dB while the same error rate is achieved by GFDM-
Sim, K=3 QAM at 27dB. Hence, for the same error rate GFDM-OQAM
Theory, K=3 can transmit symbols with half the power when compared to
10-4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 GFDM-QAM. This improvement can be explained by the use
Es/N0 in [dB] of the near orthogonality concept of OQAM.
Fig. 3 shows the inuence of the Rician fading parameter
Fig. 3. SER performance of GFDM-OQAM under Rician channel with = K on system performance in terms of SER. The parameters
0.1, = 4
considered are roll-off factor, = 0.1 and a 16-QAM
modulation scheme. From the gure we can infer that as we
whereas curve (ii) depicts the corresponding GFDM-QAM increase the K value from 0 to 3, there is a decrease in the
system performance under the same channel conditions. SER values (curve (i) to curve (iv)). Typical values at an SNR
of 21dB for K = 0, 1, 2, 3 are respectively given by 0.0260,
Clearly there is an improvement in terms of SER when using
0.0189, 0.0117 and 0.0068.
GFDM-OQAM compared to GFDM-QAM. For example, an
error rate of 0.0096 can be achieved by GFDM-OQAM at an Fig. 4 explains the effect of the NEF factor with Rician
fading parameter K = 2. As we increase the roll-off factor
from 0.1 to 0.9, there will be a wider overlap between the
subcarriers leading to an increase in NEF. Hence, there is a
decrease in system performance as we increase the NEF factor.
In Fig. 5 we show the effect of modulation order with
Rician fading parameter K = 2 and = 0.5. It is observed
that as we increase the modulation order from 2 to 7, the
SER increases as depicted in the gure. This is due to the
decrease in Euclidean distance, between P -QAM (P = 2 )
signal points, with increase in modulation order, .

V. C ONCLUSION
In this article we investigated the GFDM/OQAM modula-
tion scheme in a Rician-K fading channel. It is shown that
the derived analytical expressions match the simulated results.
We have modied conventional GFDM with an offset QAM
scheme exploiting the near orthogonality concept and this is
seen to provide an improved performance. According to the
obtained results, the application of OQAM to a GFDM system
Fig. 4. Effect of roll-off factor with = 0.1, 0.5, 0.9 under Rician fading leads to performance superiority over conventional GFDM.
channel parameter K = 2, = 4 In addition, the effect of the roll-off factor under such a

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 2016 Intl. Conference on Advances in Computing, Communications and Informatics (ICACCI), Sept. 21-24, 2016, Jaipur, India
scheme was studied and it was noted that as we decrease the
roll-off factor, the SER decreases. In spite of the additional
complexity in designing GFDM/OQAM, the resulting system
has the advantages of better spectral efciency and SER than
conventiona GFDM.
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