Principles of Orthogonal

Frequency Division Multiplexing

and Multiple Input Multiple Output
Communications Systems

OFDM

OFDM Material
Multicarrier communications
Synchronization
Issues
Synchronization
Sidelobes

OFDMA

Intersymbol Interference

Limits maximum throughput

Solutions:
Equalization (high complexity)
Longer symbol periods (generally
means lower data rate)

10-1

Irreducible BER

Occurs when symbol period (Ts)

is less than channel delay
spread,
ISI introduces an error floor to
BER

BER Floor for various modulations

Coherent Detection
+ BPSK
QPSK
OQPSK Modulation
x MSK

10-2

x
x

+
+

x
+

10-3
+
x

QPSK limit
+

10-4
10-2

10-1
delay spread
symbol period

100

J. C.-I. Chuang, "The Effects of Time Delay Spread on Portable Radio

Communications Channels with Digital Modulation," IEEE JSAC, June 1987

Multicarrier communications:
Longer period, same data rate
Concept:
Divide original data stream at
rate R into L lower rate (R/L)
streams on different carriers to
increase symbol time

Long history
KINEPLEX
ANDEFT
KATHRYN

Effects
High receiver complexity

J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,

Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

H f
B/L

separate receiver chain per carrier

Bandwidth due to sidebands

Each subcarrier experiences flat
fading

Bc
B

OFDM
Much simpler to create multicarrier transmission using
iFFT
Information carried in magnitude and phase of each bin
Then can be recovered by using FFT at receiver

Inverse Fourier transform

would be an infinite duration
sine wave
Cut at Symbol duration Ts
Rectangular windowing causes
sinc spectrum in frequency
domain with zeros at 1/Ts
Orthogonal subcarriers

Magnitude

T0

Frequency

Guard intervals and intersymbol

interference
Guard interval
OFDM Symbol

Guard interval

OFDM Symbol

Delay Spread

OFDM Symbol

Delay Spread

If we space OFDM symbols by gaps at

least as long as the delay spread, then
there will be no intersymbol interference
However, there will still be interference
within the symbol

Equalization and the DFT

While using longer symbol timing means OFDM can avoid
irreducible errors, still have interfering energy in band from
multipath
Received signal is the (linear) convolution of channel impulse
response with transmitted signal

y h* x

DFT Circular Convolution Theorem

Circular convolution of two discrete vectors in time domain

y xh
Is multiplication in the frequency domain

Yk X k H k
Implication: If we can make the system behave like a
circular convolution, equalization is trivial
complex multiplication per FFT bin at the receiver

Cyclic Prefix
Adding a cyclic
prefix at transmitter
leads to circular
convolution
Note that
misaligned timing
still results in a
circular
convolution, just
time shifted
Makes for phase
shifts in FFT bins
Correct that in a
moment

J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,

Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

Comments on Cyclic Prefix

J. Andrews, A.
Ghosh, R.
Muhamed,
Fundamentals of
WiMAX, Prentice
Hall, 2007

Permits low complexity

equalization for same data
rates
Single carrier tap#
approximately bandwidth
delay product
MAC

OFDM, number subcarriers

grows with bandwidthdelay product, so

Were transmitting redundant

bits (no information transfer)
Bandwidth penalty: L / (L + v)
Power penalty: L / (L + v)

Penalty becomes negligible as

L becomes large (but there are
tradeoffs! more later)
Power penalty generally more
important in practice where
systems are interference limited
Penalty can be avoided with
zero prefix
Nothing transmitted in guard band
(zero prefix)
Receiver adds tail back to
beginning of symbol
Used in WiMedia

Frequency Errors
Primary sources of
frequency errors
Doppler shift
Clock mismatches
Phase noise

Effects
Reduction in amplitude
(missampling sinc)
Intercarrier
interference

O. Edfors, M. Sandell, J. van de Beek D. Landstrm, F. Sjberg, An

Introduction to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, Sep 98,
Available online: http://epubl.luth.se/avslutade/0347-0881/96-16/esb96rc.pdf

Effects of Frequency Errors

Comments
Impact greater for higher
SNR signals
Note 5% estimation error
can lead to 5 dB effective
degradation at 64-QAM like
SNRs
Big frequency impact is why
OFDM was originally for
fixed deployments

Techniques
Data aided
Non data aided
Cyclic prefix

O. Edfors, M. Sandell, J. van de

Beek D. Landstrm, F. Sjberg,
An Introduction to Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing,
Sep 98, Available online:
http://epubl.luth.se/avslutade/0347
-0881/96-16/esb96rc.pdf

Fading Channel
AWGN

Solution Techniques
Spectral Effects of Windowing and Clipping

Clipping
Eliminate signals above a certain
level or ratio

Peak windowing
Filter peaks

Linear block code

Select only those codewords with
small PAPR
Can also provide error correction

Peak Cancellation
Subtract signals from high peaks
Need to be similar bandwidth to
limit out-of-band interfernce

Symbol Scrambling

Peak Cancellation, Clipping, PAPR = 4dB

Time Domain Frequency

Synchronization
Complex baseband model of passband
signal
ftx is transmitter carrier frequency, Ts is
symbol period, sn is transmitted signal
Received

Time Domain Frequency

Synchronization
Evaluate sum of products of time-delayed
and conjugated repeated symbols

Estimator
Frequency offset estimator

Ambiguity limit
When D = Ts
In AWGN, this is the maximum likelihood
detector with variance proportional to

Frequency domain (post-FFT)

Similar estimator evaluated on Fourier Transformed
signal

So same performance, but much more complex as the

DFT has to be calculated for both repeated symbols.

Channel Estimation
Channel assumed static for duration of symbol, though
frequency/phase varying over bandwidth
Solution, embed pilot symbols at regular intervals in the
symbol
Used closest pilot
Interpolate

H f

From IEEE Std 802.16-2004

More synchronization
Need to detect beginning of packet
Energy detect
Measure energy, see when it exceeds threshold

Packet detection
Correlate with known sequence

Delay and correlate

Symbol timing
No problem to be off by a fraction of the guard interval from
perspective of DFT
Bad timing does get ISI though from cyclic prefixes
Better to be early (low ISI) than late

Synchronization all together

Steps:

Detect packet beginning

Align symbol boundary
Perform coarse frequency/timing synchronization
Perform fine frequency/timing synchronization
Track changes in channel as needed

Identical symbols

802.11a Framing

Peak-to-Average Power Ratio

Output Power
(dBm)

Sum of large number of

(somewhat) independent
subcarriers leads to signal
distribution that is somewhat
Gaussian
Implications

P1dB,out

1dB

1
1
MDS

Noise Floor

BDR

P1dB,in

Input Power (dBm)

long tails for amplitude distribution PAPR CDF for Varying # Subcarriers
Possibly large ratios of peak-topower ratios
10

10

Introduces harmonics and

significant out-of-band spectral
energy

10
log(CDF)

Long tails can drive amplifiers

into nonlinear region

10

10

(a )N=16
(b) N=32
(c) N=64
(d) N=128
(e) N=256
(f) N=1024

-1

-2

(a)
(b)

-3

(c)
(d)

-4

(e)
10

10

(f)

-5

-6

8
PAPR[dB]

10

12

14

16

Adaptive Modulation
Different subcarriers
experience different
flat fades
Means different SINR
Adapting modulation
scheme of each
subcarrier to its SINR
allows the system to
approach Shannon
capacity
J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,
Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

H f

B/L
B/L

Bc
B

OFDMA
Multiple user access with
OFDM
Lots of flexibility possible
when splitting up OFDM
symbols and frames

Allocation algorithms
Maximum Sum Rate
Proportional fairness
Proportional rates
constraints

Assign different subcarriers

to different users
Assign different time slots
to different users
Vary modulation and
coding
Vary powers
More options available with
antenna arrays
J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,
Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

Antenna Array Algorithms and

MIMO

Antenna Array Principles

Exploit multiple independent channels created
by multipath diversity
Works with uncorrelated antennas

Array gain
Coherently combine energy from antennas
Works even with perfectly correlated antennas
as received SNR increases linearly with the
number of receive antennas

10
Fading Envelopes [dB]

The use of multiple antennas provide two forms

of diversity:
Diversity gain

5
0
-5

-10
0

200

400
600
Samples

800

1000

Adding additional transceiver chains is expensive (SWAP and cost), but can
provide tremendous (though competing) gains

Increase the system reliability (decrease the bit or packet error rate)
Increase the achievable data rate and hence system capacity
Increase the coverage area
Decrease the required transmit power

Receive Diversity
Oldest and simplest diversity
technique
Receiver leverages independence
of fades on antennas

Selection Diversity

Selection Combining (SC)

Choose antenna with maximum SINR
Lowest complexity

Equal Gain Combining (EGC)

Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC)
Weight signals by SINR
Best performance (system SINR is
sum of antenna SINRs)

MRC
SNR (dB)

Phase align and sum signals across

antennas

Average SNR Improvements

EGC

SC

Antennas

Open Loop Transmit Diversity (1/2)

Transmitter sends multiple
signals (possibly copies)
These interfere at the receiver,
but if coded properly, the
receiver can recover the signal

Simplest implementation is
orthogonal space time block
codes or Alamouti codes1

Assumes flat constant channel

over two symbol periods (may
not be true for high mobility)
Requires channel knowledge at
receiver
No change in rate required

h1
TX
Encoder

h2

RX
Decoder

Receiver Alamouti Operation

Output SNR 2x1 Alamouti

1. S. M. Alamouti, A simple transmit diversity technique for

wireless communications, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in
Communications, vol 16 pp.14511458, Oct 1998

Open Loop Transmit Diversity (2/2)

A 4x2 Stacked Alamouti System

2x2 STBC (same transmit

encoder) SINR

Note number of h terms

maximized when Nt = Nr for a
fixed number of antennas
Also full-diversity, orthogonal
STBCs exist only for certain
combinations of Nt and Nr.

Can also use space-time

trellis codes for added 1-2
dB, but those have
exponential complexity order

J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed, Fundamentals

of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

Comparison of STBC and MRC

Space-Time Trellis Coding

Convolutional code applied to space and time domain

Each antenna output is mapped into modulation symbol
Maximum likelihood sequence estimator ( Viterbi algorithm)

Example) Delay Diversity (by Wittneben [4])

Encoder structure for two antennas

Generator matrix form

[a1 a2 a3 a4]

QPSK mapping

Closed Loop Systems

Transmit selection diversity
Antenna(s) chosen which maximizes SINR
Equivalent to receiver selection diversity
Not as good as beamforming
Little bandwidth required
Makes most sense in in deployments with
small bandwidths and small delay spreads
(low range)

Linear diversity precoding

Feedback channel state information to transmit encoder
Transmit encoder then attempts to fine encoding matrix which maximizes SNR
at the receiver
Higher SNR than STBC

Typically use some sort of codebook to reduce feedback bandwidth

Beamforming Systems
Narrowband adaptive array or linear combiner

120
150

90 1.5
60
1
0.5

180

The weight vector is adjusted to improve the

reception of some desired signal

Angle of arrival

Eigenbeamforming

MUSIC, ESPRIT
No physical interpretation, but useful in multipath
environment
Minimize some cost function

Useful for interference rejection, multipath

fading mitigation, and increased antenna gain

interferer
30
0

desired
330 signal

210
240

270

300

Adaptive Beamforming
Narrowband beamforming is equivalent to spatial
filtering
By choosing appropriate sensor coefficients, it is
possible to steer the beam in the desired direction
By varying the sensor coefficients (spatial filter taps)
adaptively, the interference is reduced

Wideband beamforming requires joint space-time

processing
Phase shift at the antennas is frequency dependent

Frequency-dependent response is required (filter)

Common algorithms
Maximum Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio
(MSINR)
Minimum Mean Squared Error
Least Mean Squares
Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR)
Recursive Least Squares
Similar to linear precoding, but may account for
interferers

Performance Comparison
MRT refers to
maximum ratio
transmission
the choice of antenna
weights that maximize
received SNR

With optimal
eigenbeamformer,
canceling an interferer
is equivalent to
dropping and antenna
element

3 dB

Modified from: J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,

Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

Spatial Multiplexing

In rich scattering environments, independent data signals

transmitted from different antennas can be uniquely decoded to
yield an increase in channel capacity

Spatial Multiplexing Techniques

Open loop (Unknown channel)
Maximum likelihood
Little gain, except at low SNR

Zero-forcing

Closed loop (known channel)

Singular Value Decomposition
Computationally complex
Capacity (assuming waterfilling)

Evaluates pseudo-inverse of H
Can dramatically increase noise power

MMSE
Minimizes distortion
Like Zero-forcing at high SNR, but
without the instability at low SNR

BLAST
Layers & codes transmissions across
antennas
Effectively linear receiver with
successive interference cancellation
Receiver iterates through transmission
streams using MMSE or ZF
Works better in lab than real-world due
to high SNR requirement

For large SNR, capacity grows

linearly with rank of H,
approximately min{Nt, Nr}

Approximations guided by
information capacity,
error probability
detection MSE
received SNR

Can tradeoff multiplexing for

diversity

Relative Capacity as function of

Antenna Array Technique
19 BS, 3 sectors, spaced 2.8 km, mix of
users
Proportional Fair scheduling

Source: WiMAX Forum

Cooperative Antenna Arrays

Concept:
Leverage other radios to
effect an antenna array

Cooperative MIMO
First Hop

Second Hop

Applications:
Extended vehicular coverage
Backbone comm. for mesh
networks
Source Cluster Relay cluster Destination Cluster
Range extension with
cheaper devices
Transmit Diversity

Issues:
Timing, mobility
Coordination
Overhead

destination
source

Correlation/Coupling Effects
Spacing between antennas influence
correlation and coupling
Multipath components can act like interference
for beamforming which reduces antenna gain
4x4, SNR = 20 dB, 30 AS

http://www.ngwnet.ac.uk/files/wspres/mimo2.thompson.pdf

Beamforming BER

[Ref. D. Figueiredo, WPMC04]

Diversity vs. Beamforming

Diversity Combining
Combine signals from different
antenna elements using various
algorithms
Signal from each element is
processed separately
Signals have to be uncorrelated
for maximum performance
Mitigates fading
Increases gain
Can improve polarization match
No interference rejection
capabilities

Adaptive beamforming
Focus the antennas gain in the
direction of the desired signal
Achieved by manipulating the
weights associated with each
element

Antenna elements have to be

separated by /2 to attain a
certain phase difference in the
signals
Signals are correlated

All advantages of diversity

combining
Has interference rejection
capabilities
Typically > 20 dB

OFDM/MIMO Summary

OFDM Summary
OFDM overcomes even severe intersymbol
interference through the use of the IFFT and a
cyclic prefix.
Limiting factor is frequency offset
Correctable via simple algorithm when preambles
used

Two key details of OFDM implementation are

synchronization and management of the peak-toaverage ratio.
OFDMA provides a lot of flexibility to a systems
resource allocation
Permits exploitation of multi-user diversity

MIMO Summary
Spatial diversity offers incredible
improvements in reliability, comparable to
increasing the transmit power by a factor of
10100.
These diversity gains can be attained with
multiple receive antennas, multiple transmit
antennas, or a combination of both.
Beamforming techniques are an alternative to
directly increase the desired signal energy
while suppressing, or nulling, interfering
signals.
In contrast to diversity and beamforming,
spatial multiplexing allows multiple data
streams to be simultaneously transmitted
using sophisticated signal processing.
Since multiple-antenna techniques require
channel knowledge, the MIMO-OFDM channel
can be estimated, and this channel knowledge
can be relayed to the transmitter for even
larger gains.
It is possible to switch between diversity and
multiplexing modes to find a desirable
reliability-throughput operating point; multiuser
MIMO strategies can be harnessed to transmit
to multiple users simultaneously over parallel
spatial channels.

J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,

Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007

Useful References
O. Edfors, M. Sandell, J. van de Beek, D.
Landstrm, F. Sjberg, An introduction to
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, Sep
1996.
A. Bahai, B. Saltzbeg, M. Ergen, Multi-Carrier
Digital Communications Theory and Applications
of OFDM, Springer 2nd edition, 2004.
J. Andrews, A. Ghosh, R. Muhamed,
Fundamentals of WiMAX, Prentice Hall, 2007