Design of the OFDM Signal Generator Based on

ADS and FPGA Simulation

Wang Bin Yinchao Chen
Feng Di Yang Shuhui Gong Lin College of College of
Information and Information and
North China College of College of Communication Communication
Institute of Information and Information and Engineering Engineering
Computing Communication Communication Beijing Beijing
Technology Engineering Engineering Information Information
Beijing, China Beijing Beijing &Technology &Technology
Fengdi822@gmail. Information Information University University
com &Technology &Technology Beijing, China Beijing, China
University University
Beijing, China Beijing, China
huishuyang@sina.c
n
Abstract-Based on the IEEE 802.11a protocol , ADS software So the amplifier within the transmitter have a strict demand
was used to simulate the OFDM signal wave and system for its linear quality. If the dynamic range of the amplifier
spectrum ,data rate ranging from 6 to 54 Mbps. Then a can not meet the changes of the signal and signal distortion
24Mpbs rate OFDM signal generator was designed based on occurs, at this time ,the spectrum will change and the
the FPGA simulation ,and the simulation results were analyzed orthogonality between each sub-carrier was destroyed
and compared . Xilinx Spartan-3E was selected as the FPGA ,deterioration of the system performances. In order to
platform and Verilog HDL language was used in study the methods of overcoming the OFDM
programming the FPGA chip. The results of the design were shortcomings, we need to design the OFDM signal
fine in the process of debug in the Modelism environment.
generator. In this article , we design a OFDM signal
generator for WLAN emulation by using ADS and
Keywords-:OFDM;802.11a;Signal Generator;ADS ;FPGA
FPGA.
I. Intraduction
II. system design
OFDM is not only a wireless access mode of the next-
The main parameters of the OFDM technology
generation cellular mobile communication nowit is also a
standards in IEEE 802.11a physical layer protocol are
basic technology of broadband wireless access in the future. shown in [1]. Being 52 sub-carriers in the physical layer, we
At present, IEEE 802.11,ETSI BRAN and MMAC are use a 64point IFFT algorithm, plus the DC sub-carrier
those three forums that responsible for the development of transmission symbols, there are 53 sub-carriers in total.
wireless broadband communication systems standard and all
Label the 52 sub-carriers -26,-25, ,-2,-1,1, ,26. In order
use the OFDM technology as modulation mode in the
to meet the continuous tracking of the reference phase, the
physical layer. In conclusionOFDM technology plays an
corresponding pilot signal is inserted in 4 sub-carriers,
important role in solving the high-speed data transmission labeled -21,-7, 7,21.Therefore there are only 48 sub-carriers
problems of the wireless communication system. in transporting the data symbols in fact.
Compared with the single-carrier system, the output of The length of one OFDM symbol contains a guard
OFDM system is composed of the signals of the multiple interval of 800 ns, so the effective data length is:
sub-channels , thus it still has the following
disadvantages.(1)Frequency deviation contributes a lot to 4 0.8 = 3.2 s 1
the impact, which is one of the main disadvantages. When So we can get the sub-carrier spacing using the
the signal is transported in the wireless channel following fomula:
orthogonality between the sub-carriers of the OFDM 1 = 312.5 kHz 2
system can be destroyed if the frequency offset occur for 3.2s
its time variable property ,like Doppler frequency shift etc,
or the local oscillator of the receiver have a frequency III. design analyze based on ads
deviation with the transmitter carrier, those all lead to One OFDM symbol contains multiple sub-carriers
inter-symbol interference. (2)There is a higher Peak to modulated synthesized signals, and each sub-carrier can be
Average Ratio(PAR).When the multiple carrier signal is in phase-shift keying (PSK) or quadrature amplitude
the phase-coherent statethe instantaneous power is far modulation (QAM) symbol modulation. From the moment
greater than the average power of the signal, and it will t = t s ,OFDM symbols can be expressed in the following
lead to the emergence of high peak to average power ratio.
equation:

Fund: National Natural Science Foundation (61171039)

978-1-61284-683-5/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE

 N 1
s(t ) = i=0
Re{ di retc(t t s T / 2) exp[j2f i (t t s )]},t s t t s + T
0, t < t t > T + t
s s
(3)
Where N denotes the number of sub-channels. T
represents the duration of one OFDM symbol .di
(i=0,1,,N 1) represents the data symbols of each sub-
channel.
When the transmitted data bit is mapped to each sub-
carrier is needed, some modulation modes are required to
meet the command, through which the data bit to be
transmitted can be mapped to amplitude and phase of the
sub-carrier. Usually the complex equivalent baseband signal
is used to represent the output signal of the OFDM, from the
When RATE is set to different values, the data rate
will change accordingly .
When RATE=0, the spectrum of the OFDM signal is
shown in Figure 2 ,and the signal is shown in figure 3. It
can be seen that the OFDM signal in the time domain is
similar to the noise signal , the signal is mostly concentrated
in a magnitude interval . The signal carrier is around 5.2
GHz , the bandwidth of the modulated signal is about
16MHz,which is consistent with Table1. One OFDM
symbol contains 24 data bits when the data rate is 6Mbps,
therefore the length of the padding bits is:
24 mod 162224 = 10 bit 6
Then, the length of the DATA-domain signal is :
4 1622 + 10 / 24 = 272 s 7
0

moment t = t s , a modulated OFDM symbol is expressed -10

as: -20

dBm(Spectrum)
N 1
T i -30

di rect(t ts ) exp[ j 2 (t ts )], ts t ts + T
s(t ) = i=0 2 T
-40

-50
0, t < t t > T + t
s s -60

4 -70

In fomula (4), the real part of the complex baseband -80

5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.
signal corresponding to the OFDM symbol in the same
freq, GHz
direction component and the imaginary part corresponds to Figure 2 RATE=0, spectrum of OFDM signal
the quadrature component. 4

A Simulate the OFDM signal at the 802.11a envrionment 3

by using ADS
mag(Frame)

802.11a WLAN signal transmission module is 2

included in the communication system simulation module

of ADS, we can simulate the OFDM signal under the 1

802.11a protocol when the module we just mentioned

above is connected to the spectrum analysis module and 0
time domain analysis module. The simulation schematic 0 50 100 150 200 250 3

diagram is shown in Figure 1. time, usec

Figure 3 RATE=0, OFDM waveform in time domain

According to the detail frame structure of PPDU, plus

Figure 1 ADS simulation schematic diagram of the OFDM signal
RF carrier is set to 5.2GHz, signal bandwidth is
20MHz, signal energy is 16dBm, the parameter of the
signal domain is set to 200, the data length but the fill bits
of the DATA domain is:
16 + 8 200 + 6 = 1622 bit
the length of the training sequence and the SIGNAL
domain to the equation (7) as follow .It can be seen that the
data is consistent with Figure 3.
2 8 + 4 + 272 = 292 s 8
RATE=4, spectrum and time domain waveform of the
OFDM signal generated by the signal generator is show in
Figure 4 and Figure 5 respectively. Compared the Figure 4
with the Figure 2, it can be seen that the spectrum of signal
convergents better when the data rate is 24MHz than rate is
18 MHz, also the carrier and the bandwidth information are
basically the same . for the time-domain signal in Figure 5,
for the data rate is 24MHz, this time one OFDM symbol
5 contains 96 data bits, so the length of the padding bits is:
96 mod 162296 = 10 bit 9
 Then, the length of DATA domain signal is :
4 1622 + 10 / 96 = 68 s 10
According to the detail frame structure of PPDU, plus
Figure 6 FPGA simulation figure of convolutional codes
the length of the training sequence and the SIGNAL
domain to the equation (10) as follow, It can be seen that the
data is consistent with Figure 5. ii. Symbol modulation16QAM
QAM is composed of multi-level amplitude shift keying
2 8 + 4 + 68 = 88 s 11 signals of tow orthogonal carrier. Simulate the 16QAM
0
module in Modelsim, waveform is shown in Figure 7.

-20
dBm(Spectrum)

-40

-60

-80

Figure 7 FPGA simulation figure of QAM

-100
5.16 5.17 5.18 5.19 5.20 5.21 5.22 5.23 5.24

freq, GHz iii. Add a cyclic prefix

Figure 4 RATE=4, spectrum of OFDM Take the advantage of the nature of the circular
3.5
convolution in the discrete-time linear system theory. The
3.0 waveforms after the cyclyic prefix was added is shown in
2.5
Figure 8.
mag(Frame)

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Figure 8 FPGA simulation figure of syclic prefix
time, usec
Figure 5 RATE=4, time domain waveform of OFDM
The waveform added with the cyclic prefix is the
IV. design based on fpga OFDM signal which fully meet the design requirement.
N=90000, OFDM signal waveform generated by the
A. Overall design of the OFDM signal generator random signal generated by the FPGA simulation . The
input signal of the signal generator can be changed.
The choose of the modulation mode and coding
efficiency is based on the IEEE 802.11a WLAN protocol .
Date rate is 24MHz, 16QAM and 1/2 convolutional code.
First using the MATLAB to generate a 96 bit binary
random number of one OFDM symbol ,stored in the
input.txt file ,and then using the Verilog HDL language to
achieve the signal generator on the FPGA .

B. FPGA design of the main module

i. Channel coding Convolution
In order to improve the quality of signal transmission
in digital communication system ,we need to code the
channel for the input signal. Convolutional codes used in the Figure 9 time-domain waveform of the OFDM signal in FPGA
802.11a protocol is commonly used channel coding .
Generator polynomial (1338,1718)is used for the ACKNOWLEDGMENT
convolutional code ,and the coding efficiency is 1/2. The
convolutional coding is achieved by programming in The authors would like to thank Institute of New
Verilog language, and the simulation waveforms are shown Communication Technologies of BISTU for providing ADS
in Figure 6. which was bought from Agilent to us.

preferences
[1] Wen Liu, Gao Feng, Gao Zehua. The IEEE 802.11a wireless
LAN performance analysis . Data communications, 2009,4:19
~ 21
[2] Dai Yi. Design and implementation of the OFDM IF
modulation system based on FPGA. Dissertation of Beijing
University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2007
[3] Xu Hanghui. Cancellation algorithm of high frequency
OFDM ICI . Shanghai Jiaotong University dissertation, 2010