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

 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 System 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,k sN,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
Guard interval (2) - Cyclic extension
 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

System Proposal
 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, Nw in = 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
-50
Decoding / symbol de- -60 -40 OFDM -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.
 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 System

 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