DEEKSHA TECH GROUP

DeekshaTech

Module 5

OFDMA and SC FDMA

www.deekshatech.in

Agenda

Understand LTE Duplexing

Single Transmitter
FDMA Principle
Multi carrier principle

OFDMA and SC FDMA Principle

Multipath Propagation
Cyclic Prefix
OFDMA and SC FDMA
Transmitter
Receiver
OFDM and SC FDMA Key
Parameters
Resource Block

Duplexing and Multiple

Access

Legacy- Single
Transmitter

FDMA Principle

LTE: Multi-Carrier
Principle

Transform
amplitude

Time Domain

fs

Ts

time

1
Ts

Inverse
Fourier
Transform

Advantages:
Simple to implement: there is
no complex filter system required
to detect such pulses and to
generate them.
The pulse has a clearly defined
duration. This is a major
advantage in case of multi-path
propagation environments as it
simplifies handling of intersymbol interference.

spectral power density

The Rectangular
Pulse
Fourier
Frequency Domain

fs

frequency f/fs

Disadvantage:
It allocates a quite huge
spectrum
However the spectral power
density has null points exactly
at multiples of the frequency fs =
1/Ts.
This will be important in OFDM.

OFDMA Principle
Transmits hundreds or even thousands of separately
modulated radio signals using orthogonal subcarriers
spread across a wideband channel
Total transmission bandwidth
15 kHz in LTE: fixed

Orthogonality:
The peak (centre
frequency) of one
subcarrier
intercepts the
nulls of the
neighbouring
subcarriers

OFDM Basics
Data is sent in parallel across the set of subcarriers, each
subcarrier only transports a part of the whole transmission
The throughput is the sum of the data rates of each
individual (or used) subcarriers while the power is
distributed to all used subcarriers
FFT ( Fast Fourier Transform) is used to create the
orthogonal subcarriers. The number of subcarriers is
determined by the FFT size ( by the bandwidth)
Power
Bandwidth

Frequency

OFDM Signal

OFDM: Nutshell
DeekshaTech

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Frequency-Time Representation

FFT/IFFT
It can be shown that the OFDM signal may be obtained by
transforming L data symbols by the IFFT, where L is the
number of subcarriers.
Therefore, OFDM transmitter and receiver are
implemented using IFFT and FFT respectively.
Time-domain
(to be transmitted)
d1
d2

dL

IFFT

FFT

d1
d2
dL

The size of the FFT should be chosen carefully as a balance

Motivation for OFDMA

Good performance in frequency selective
fading channels
Low complexity of base-band receiver
Good spectral properties and handling of
multiple bandwidths
Link adaptation
Frequency domain scheduling
Compatibility with advanced receiver and
antenna technologies.

Challenges

1) ISI

Solution: CP

2) Multi-Carrier Modulation
The center frequencies must be spaced so that interference between
different carriers, known as Adjacent Carrier Interference ACI, is minimized;
but not too much spaced as the total bandwidth will be wasted.
Each carrier uses an upper and lower guard band to protect itself from its
adjacent carriers. Nevertheless, there will always be some interference
between the adjacent carriers.

fsubcarrier
fsub-used

f0

f1

f2

fN-2

fN-1

ACI = Adjacent Carrier Interference

frequency

Solution: OFDM Multi-Carrier

Power Density

Power Density

OFDM allows a tight packing of small carrier

called the subcarriers - into a given frequency band.

Frequency (f/fs)

Saved
Bandwidth

Frequency (f/fs)

No ACI (Adjacent Carrier Interference) in OFDM

due to the orthogonal subcarriers !

3)Inter-Carrier Interference
(ICI)
The price for the optimum subcarrier spacing is the sensitivity of
OFDM to frequency errors.
If the receivers frequency slips some fractions from the subcarriers
center frequencies, then we encounter not only interference between
adjacent carriers, but in principle between all carriers.
This is known as Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) and sometimes
also referred to as Leakage Effect in the theory of discrete Fourier
transform.
One possible cause that introduces frequency errors is a fast moving
Transmitter or Receiver (Doppler effect).

Two effects begin to work:

Subcarrier has no longer
its power density
maximum- so loose of
signal energy.

The rest of subcarriers

have no longer a null

point here. So we get
some noise from the other
subcarrier.

I3
I1
I4
I0
f0

f1

f2

f3

f4

ICI = Inter-Carrier Interference

Frequency Drift

OFDM
Transmitter
Frequency
Domain
Signal:
(Collection of
Sinusoids)

s0

xN-1

s1 s2

f0 f1 f2

x0 x1

sN-1

t0 t1 xt22

fN-1 freq.

tN-1 time

Time Domain Signal

Binary
Coded
Data

Serial
Serial to
to
Parallel
Parallel
Converter
Converter
(Bit
(Bit
Distrib.)
Distrib.)

.
.
.

cos(2fct)

IFFT
IFFT

x0, x1, , xN-1

Time
Domain

CP/Guard
CP/Guard
Generation
Generation

b20 ,b21, Modulation

Modulation s1
Mapper
Mapper

Frequency Domain

b10 ,b11, Modulation

Modulation s0
Mapper
Mapper

I
IQ
IQ
Split
Split

D
D
A
A

D
D
A
A

Low
Low I
Pass
Pass

RF

Low
Low Q
Pass
Pass
-sin(2fct)

bN-1 0

Modulation
Modulation sN-1
Mapper
Mapper

Each entry to the IFFT

module corresponds to a
different sub-carrier
Each sub-carrier is
modulated independently by
Modulation Schemes:
BPSK,QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM

OFDM Receiver
tN-1 time

Frequency Domain

AGC
AGC
Automatic
Automatic
Gain
Gain Control
Control

Windowing +
FFT

s0

s1

s1

.
.
.

sN-1
reference
(pilot)

Frequency
Frequency And
And Timing
Timing Sync
Sync

.
.
.

sN-1
channel
response

s0
Channel Correction
Correction
Channel

D
D

signal autocorreation

D
D

timee
adjust

A
A

phase correction

LNA gain

Derotator

signal strength

Demodulator
Demodulator

Low Noise
Noise Amp.
Amp.
Low
+ Bandpass
Bandpass
+

Time Domain

A
Q A

sN-1

Frequency Domain

t0 t1 t2

RF

s2

x2

s1

Channel
Channel
Estimation
Estimation

f0 f1 f2

Bit
Bit Mapping
Mapping
Bit
Bit Mapping
Mapping

fN-1 freq.
B10 ,B11,
B20 ,B21,

.
.
.

.
.
.

BN-1 0

Bit
Bit Mapping
Mapping
QPSK
Im
01

11
sk

d11
Re
d10

00

10

Bit Distribution
Distribution
Bit

s0

yN-1

y0y1

Soft Bit
Coded
Data

OFDM Key Parameters

1)
1) Variable
Variable Bandwidth
Bandwidth options:
options: 1.4,
1.4, 3,
3, 5,
5, 10,
10, 15
15 and
and
20
20 MHz
MHz

Frequency
f
Power
density
2) Subcarrier Spacing (f = 15 KHz)
The Symbol time is
Tsymbol = 1/ f = 66,7s
Frequency

Amplitude
TCP
TSYMBOL
CP

T
SYMBOL
TS

Time

OFDM Key Parameters

3) The number of Subcarriers Nc
If BW = 20MHz Transmission BW = 20MHz 2MHz = 18 MHz
the number of subcarriers Nc = 18MHz/15KHz = 1200 subcarriers
Channel Bandwidth [MHz]
Transmission Bandwidth Configuration [RB]

Channel edge

Resource block

Channel edge

Transmission
Bandwidth [RB]

Active Resource Blocks

DC carrier (downlink only)

OFDM Key Parameters

4) IFFT size Nifft
For a bandwidth BW = 20 MHz
Nc = 1200 subcarriers not a power of 2
The next power of 2 is 2048 the rest 2048 -1200
848 padded with zeros
5. Sampling rate fs
This parameter indicates what is the sampling frequency:
fs = Nfft x f
Example: for a bandwidth BW = 5 MHz (with 10% guard band)
The number of subcarriers Nc = 4.5 MHz/ 15 KHz = 300
300 is not a power of 2 next power of 2 is 512 Nfft = 512
Fs = 512 x 15 KHz = 7,68 MHz fs = 2 x 3,84 MHz which is the chip rate in
UMTS!!
The sampling rate is a multiple of the chip rate from UMTS/
HSPA. This was acomplished because the subcarriers spacing
is 15 KHz. This means UMTS and LTE have the same clock
timing!

OFDM Recap
Bandwidth
(NCf)

1.4
MHz

Subcarrier

3 MHz

Data
Subcarriers (NC)
NIFFT
(IFFT Length)
Number of
Resource Blocks
Symbols/slot
CP length

10 MHz

15 MHz

20 MHz

Fixed to 15 kHz Spacing (f)

Symbol
duration
Sampling rate,
fS (MHz)

5 MHz

T symbol = 1/f = 1/15kHz = 66.67s

1.92

3.84

7.68

15.36

23.04

30.72

72

180

300

600

900

1200

128

320

512

1024

1536

2048

15

25

50

75

100

Normal CP=7; extended CP=6

Normal CP=4.69/5.12sec., Extended CP= 16.67sec

OFDMA Challenges
1) Tolerance to frequency offset
(Inter carrier Interference-ICI)

ICI

Frequency

2) High Peak-to-Average Power

Ratio (PAPR)

SC FDMA

SC-FDMA
Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple
Access is another variant of OFDMA used to
reduce the PAPR for lower RF hardware
requirements.

SC-FDMA is one option in WiMAX (802.16d)

and it is the method selected for EUTRAN in the
uplink direction.

SC-FDMA

This mechanism can reduce the PAPR of 6..9 dB

compared to normal OFDMA.

OFDMA

SC-FDMA is a new hybrid modulation scheme

that cleverly combines the low PAR of singlecarrier systems with the multipath resistance
and flexible subcarrier frequency allocation
offered by OFDM.

SC-FDMA and OFDMA

OFDMA transmits data in parallel across multiple subcarriers
SC-FDMA transmits data in series employing multiple subcarriers
In the example:
OFDMA: 6 modulation symbols ( 01,10,11,01,10 and 10) are
transmitted per OFDMA symbol, one on each subcarrier
SC-FDMA: 6 modulation symbols are transmitted per SC-FDMA
symbol using all subcarriers. The duration of each modulation symbol
is 1/6th of the modulation symbol in OFDMA

OFDMA

SC-FDMA

OFDMA vs SC-FDMA:
QPSK

From: TS

36.211.

SC-FDMA and OFDMA

Difference in transmission: for SC-FDMA there is an extra block on
the transmission chain: the FFT block
which should spread the input modulation symbols over all the
allocated subcarriers

OFDM

SC-FDMA

SC-FDMA Principles

PAPR is the same as that used for the input modulation symbols
This could be achieved by transmitting N
modulation symbols in series at N times the
rate.
One can see that the SC-FDMA symbol which is
having 66.66s is containing N sub-symbols
N = 6 in the example shown
In Time domain only one modulation symbol
is transmitted at a time.

The number of subcarriers which could be allocated for transmission

hould be multiple of 2,3 and/or 5
This limitation is imposed by the input of the FFT block which is
before the IFFT. This enables efficient implementation of the
FFT.
Note that also the number of Resource Blocks should be
multiple of 2,3 or/and 5

SC-FDMA Principles

The FFT output size is always smaller than the IFFT input size
This is because total cells uplink capacity
will always be greater than bandwidth
allocated to any one UE
Other UEs will be assigned other groups of
subcarriers to use across the uplink channel
bandwidth.
No two UEs will be assigned the same
180KHz block to use simultaneously.
As not all sub-carriers are used by the
mobile station, many of them are set to zero
in the diagram
Note that if the output size of the FFT is equal
to the size of the IFFT input then the overall
effect is null since the two operations (FFT and
IFFT are complementary)

FFT

Subcarriers
allocated for one
UE

Subcarriers
allocated to
other users or
set to zero

.
.
.

IFFT

SC-FDMA Principles
Adjusting the data rate in SC-FDMA
If the data rate increases more bandwidth is needed to transmit more modulation
symbols (when data rate is doubled the resource allocation in the frequency domain
is also doubled). The individual transmission is now shorter in time but wider in
the frequency domain.
For double data rate the amount of inputs in transmitter doubles and the subsymbol duration (Time) is halved. Note that the SC-FDMA is still 67 s

SC-FDMA
subsymbol
duration
Initial
bandwidt
h

Double the
data rate

Halved SCFDMA subsymbol

duration
Doubled
bandwidth

SC-FDMA
SC-FDMA
symbol
symbol
67sfor double data rate
67s
In the example 6 modulation symbols
are sent initially and 12 modulations

SC-FDMA: Multiplexing

One user always continuous in frequency

Smallest uplink bandwidth, 12 subcarriers: 180 kHz (same for OFDMA in downlink)
Largest uplink bandwidth: 20 MHz (same for OFDMA in downlink)

In time domain the granularity for resource

allocation is 1 ms for one user (same for OFDMA in
downlink)
Receiver
User 1

User 1
User 2

User 2

Bandwidth Distribution
Carrier
Number of
Bandwidth
SubCarriers
(MHz)

1.4

72

198

330

10

660

15
20

990
1320

Resource: Element, Block,

Grid

LTE Reference Signals (R)are

Interspersed Among Resource
Elements
[source: 3GPP TR 25.814]

The Usage of RE
Resource elements
reserved for
reference symbols

12 subcarriers

Frequency

One subframe (1ms)

Control Channel
Region (1-3 OFDM symbols)

Data
Region

Time

Duplexing FDD/TDD
FDD

..

Frequency band 1..

..

Frequency band 2..

TDD

..

Single frequency
band
Downlink

..

Uplink

Different Methods for OFDMA

Time Division Multiple Access
Plain Orthogonal Frequency Orthogonal Frequency
on OFDM
Multiple Access
Multiple Access
OFDMA
OFDMA

Plain OFDM
time

time

time

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2 ...

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2 ...

2 ...

2 ...

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2 ...
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2
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2
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2
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1
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1
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1
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1

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subcarrier

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...

subcarrier

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subcarrier

subcarrier

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time

...

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2 ...

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2 ...

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2 ...

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1 UE 1

2 UE 2

3 UE 3

OFDMA is registered trademark of Runcom Technologies Ltd.

common info
(may be addressed via HL)

Resource Block (RB)

Thank you