1

OFDM 2
Principles of OFDM


Dr. Essam Sourour
2
Overview
OFDM Fundamentals
OFDM signal generation and design
Characteristics of OFDM signal
Impact of OFDM signal parameters
OFDM Symbol windowing
3
OFDM is a Multi Carrier Modulation
Symbols at rate R are serial to parallel
converted to N parallel streams
Each stream is at rate R/N
Symbol duration per stream increased N times
Bandwidth per stream reduced N times
Each stream modulates one of N orthogonal
carriers
Implemented easily with IFFT / FFT
What is OFDM ?
4
Resistant to Multipath fading
Requires simple frequency domain
equalization
Resistant to narrow band interference
Easy to implement with IFFT / FFT
Flexibility for adaptive loading (seen later)
Suitable for Space-Time and Space-
Frequency antenna processing

Advantages of OFDM
5
Symbols X
0
to X
N-1
modulate N orthogonal Carriers
Performed with IFFT
2
1
0
1
kn
N
j
N
n k
k
x X e
N
t

=
=

x
+
0
j
e
e
S
e
r
i
a
l

t
o

P
a
r
a
l
l
e
l
x
x
1
j
e
e
1 N
j
e
e

IFFT
Add
Guard
guard
X
0
X
N-1
X
0
X
N-1
x
n
T
s
NT
s
OFDM Modulation
6
After IFFT, a guard band
(cyclic prefix) is added at the
beginning
Guard band duration must be >
channel maximum delay
Guard band prevents Inter-
Symbol Interference (ISI) due
to multipath
Add guard
After IFFT
OFDM Symbol
T
g
T
o
OFDM Guard (Prefix)
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General OFDM Modulation and Demodulation
Symbol
Mapping
S
/
P
I
F
F
T
P
/
S
Add
Guard
bits
PSK or QAM
RF
RF
Remove
Guard
S
/
P
F
F
T
P
/
S
Frequency
Domain
Equalizer
Symbol
De-
Mapping
bits
PSK or QAM
frequency
Complete OFDM Modulation
8
Time-Frequency OFDM Signal
OFDM
Symbols
9
OFDM Signal Parameters
Assume Transmitter IFFT of size N is used
Number of Guard samples = N
G

Sampling frequency at the input of IFFT if
f
s
(QPSK or QAM symbols)
Hence:
OFDM Symbol Duration= (N+N
G
)/f
s
Subcarrier spacing (BW) = f
s
/N
Number of subcarriers s N (not all used)


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Parameters Implications
Guard Interval T
G
=N
G
/f
s
:
Must be > channel max delay spread
Subcarrier spacing f
s
/N:
Equals subcarrier BW
Subcarrier BW Needs to be < coherence bandwidth
for constant fading over subcarrier
coherence bandwidth=1/(channel max Delay
Spread)
frequency
f
0
f
1
f
N-1
g
1
g
N-1
g
0
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Parameters Implications
OFDM Symbol Duration (N+N
G
)/f
s
:
Fading must be constant (in time) during OFDM
Symbol
Multipath gains must not change during the OFDM
Symbol
Coherence time=1/(max Doppler frequency)
(N+N
G
)/f
s
< coherence time
Number of used subcarriers s N
Edge subcarriers modulated be zero to control overall
bandwidth
Center subcarrier set to zero to avoid DC offset
effects
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Parameters Example: IEEE 802.11g
Carrier frequency ~ 2.4 GHz
Sampling frequency f
s
=20 MHz
FFT size N=64
Guard Sample N
G
=16 = 0.8 s
OFDM Symbol Duration = 4 s
Subcarrier spacing = 312.5 kHz
Carriers used = 52 (center + 11 sides not used)
Max Delay Spread ~ 250 ns
Doppler frequency (3 km/hr) ~ 13 Hz
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Multipath Fading is a time varying FIR filter
Building 2 v
Z
-1
X
Z
-1
X
Z
-1
X
Z
-1
X
+
h
0
h
1
h
2
h
L-1
X h
L-2
s
0
s
1
s
2
s
L-1
Channel Output
Channel Input
Channel gain
frequency
Selective
Multipath leads to frequency
selective fading
Multipath Fading
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OFDM mitigates multipath fading in 2 ways:

Narrow band sub-carriers
Flat Fading per sub-carrier
Simple Equalization
Guard band
Multipath is equivalent to cyclic shift
No or small ISI

OFDM & Multipath Fading
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Narrow band sub-carriers
Each sub-carrier is subject to flat fading
Sub-carrier bandwidth is almost undistorted
RX performs channel gain estimation
Flat fading is easily compensated
frequency
Single Carrier
frequency
OFDM
Frequency
Selective Fading
OFDM & Selective Fading
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Some Properties of FFT
FFT
x(n)+y(n)
X(k)+Y(k)
Linearity
N points
FFT
x(n-n
0
)
( )
0
2
kn
j
N
X k e
t
Circular shift
Circular Shifting
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Cyclic Prefix Guard Band
RX drops the guard interval
Left is sum of cyclically shifted OFDM Symbols
Cyclic shifting in time domain = phase shift in
frequency domain
FFT outputs sum of phase rotated OFDM Symbols
Phase rotation corrected by equalization
guard time
Part retained at RX
Multipath Delayed
OFDM Symbols
OFDM & Inter-Symbol Interference
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Without Guard ?
Transmitted OFDM Symbols
time
OFDM
Symbol 1
OFDM
Symbol 2
OFDM
Symbol 3
Received OFDM Symbols with ISI
time
ISI takes place
Path 2
Path 1
Path 0
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With Zero Guard ?
Transmitted OFDM Symbols
Received OFDM Symbols without ISI
FFT output is NOT phase shifted version
of ideal OFDM Symbol
time
OFDM
Symbol 1
OFDM
Symbol 2
OFDM
Symbol 3
No ISI
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Correct Guard
Output of FFT without fading is X(k), k=0, 1 ,N-1
Output of FTT with fading =
time
OFDM
Symbol 1
OFDM
Symbol 2
OFDM
Symbol 3
Part applied to Rx FFT
Path 2
Path 1
Path 0
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( )
1 2
1 2
2 2
0 1 2
2 2
0 1 2
Channel gain
kn kn
j j
N N
kn kn
j j
N N
Z k h X k h X k e h X k e
X k h h e h e
t t
t t
= + +
(
= + +
(

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Encoding Interleaving
Symbol
mapping
Pilot &
zeros
Insertion
IFFT Windowing
Scrambling Puncturing
Add Guard RF
Information
bits
OFDM Specific Processing
Full OFDM Transmitter
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A/D
Sync AGC
RSSI
Coarse
frequency
offset
estimation
Fine
frequency
offset
estimation
Channel
Equalizer
Channel
estimation
Remove
Guard
FFT
Symbol
de-mapping
de-
interleaving
decoding
de-
scrambling
Information
bits
RF
P/S
OFDM Specific
Processing
Full OFDM Receiver
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PSD of OFDM symbol falls off slowly, according
to a Sinc function
Time domain windowing is applied to make the
PSD go down rapidly
Windowing Span OFDM Symbol (Data + Guard)
Usually raised cosine windowing is used:

0.5 0.5cos 0
( ) 1.0
( )
0.5 0.5cos (1 )
t
t T
T
w t T t T
t T
T t T
T
t
t |
|
|
t
|
|
| |
+ + s s
|
\ .

= s s

| |

+ s s +
|

\ .

Windowing
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Windowing
OFDM Symbol
Without Windowing
+
+
OFDM Symbols Windowing
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0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
1.2
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Time in sec
W
i
n
d
o
w

G
a
i
n
Data Guard
| = 0.05
T = 4 sec
Window Shape
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Excess Bandwidth
depends on the roll-off
factor |
| = 0.05 used in
IEEE802.11a

Data Guard Guard
Window Gain
One OFDM Symbol
Effect of Windowing on Spectrum
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Each OFDM subcarrier is subject to flat fading
(complex channel gain)
For each subcarrier, need to estimate its gain h
k
This gain is used in the Equalizer for
compensation
frequency
Frequency
Selective Fading
OFDM
h
0
h
1
h
N-1
h
2
Channel Estimation
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Channel Estimation is done
using:
Training OFDM symbol before
the data
Pilot tones within the data to track
changes
In IEEE 802.11a:
10 Training Symbols ST for Sync
2 Training Symbols LT for
channel estimation
4 Pilot subcarriers in all other
OFDM Symbols for tracking
4 sec
OFDM Symbols
s
u
b
c
a
r
r
i
e
r
s
ST LT
SF
DF
Training Symbols
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Least Squared (LS):
Simplest Technique
Directly use FFT output for the pilot symbols
Acceptable performance
Minimum Mean Squared Error (MMSE):
Optimum filtering of Pilots FFT outputs
Takes into consideration how they are
correlated and the level of noise
Best performance
Estimation Methods
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LS and MMSE: J. J. van de Beek, O. Edfors, M.
Sandell, S. K. Wilson, and P. O. Borjesson, On channel
estimation in OFDM systems, in Proc. IEEE Vehicular
Technology Conf., vol. 2, Chicago, IL, July 1995, pp.
815819.
ML: Erik G. Larsson, Guoqing Liu, Jian Li, and Georgios
B. Giannakis, Joint symbol timing and channel
estimation for OFDM based WLANs, IEEE
Communications Letters, Vol. 5, NO. 8, August 2001
Using Pilots: Ye (Geoffrey) Li, Pilot-symbol-aided
channel estimation for OFDM in wireless systems, IEEE
Trans. Veh. Tech., Vol. 49, NO. 4, July 2000
Channel Est. References
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The channel gain for each
subcarrier h
k
must have
been estimated
For each OFDM Symbol:
Remove Guard
Apply FFT
Divide each subcarrier by
estimated channel gains h
k
, or
We may instead multiply by
h*
k
and consider |h
k
|
2
when we
map the subcarrier symbol into
bits
Remove guard
Apply FFT
OFDM Symbol
Apply Equalizer
Channel Equalization
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OFDM is a viable modulation technique for
multipath fading channels
Modulation and demodulation presented
Important OFDM parameters presented
A guard band protects from multipath fading
effects
Windowing important to control transmission BW
Channel estimation and channel equalization are
simple tasks in OFDM
Summary