A Comparison of OFCDM and segmented-OFDM in Broadband MIMO Downlink Channel

Makoto Yoshida
Fujitsu Ltd 5-5 Hikari-no-oka Yokosuka 239-0847, Japan mako@labs.fujitsu.com
Abstract The spectral efficiencies (bps/Hz/cell) of OFCDM and segmented-OFDM for MIMO channels were evaluated subject to the outage probability. The systems apply 2x2 Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) to reduce the fade margin. The performance comparison involved: (1) wireless link-level simulation for the fourth-generation (4G) mobile communication system and (2) system-level simulation in a multi-cell environment. The evaluating scenarios were the typical one with a moderate velocity, and a severe conditions one with velocities of more than 200 km/h. We point out the effectiveness of segmented-OFDM for the broadband wireless access in the downlink and the possibility of a frequency reuse factor of 1. Keywords-component; OFDM, MIMO, Outage Probability, Spectral efficiency

Atsuhiko Sugitani
Mobile Techno Corp. 3-4 Hikari-no-oka Yokosuka 239-0847, Japan sugitani@moteco.co.jp Section 2 describes the proposed broadband mobile system model. Section 3 describes the evaluation criteria in a multi-cell environment and defines the terms. Section 4 describes the comparison of the multiplexing schemes, which was done by computer simulation, and section 5 presents our conclusions. II. PROPOSED BROADBAND MOBILE SYSTEM

Table I lists the main specifications of our fourth-generation mobile system proposal. The goal of the system is to provide high-quality channels with an average PER of less than 10-2 to mobiles that may be traveling at more than 200 km/h. The number of Tx/Rx antennas was Tx/Rx = 1/2 (SIMO) or Tx/Rx = 2/2 (MIMO). Figure 1 shows the block diagram of the transmitter and receiver. The transmitter encodes and modulates each users data sequence. We considered two multiplexing schemes: OFCDM and segmented-OFDM. In OFCDM, the p-th datamodulated symbol of the u-th user, Uu,p, is spread over multiple sub-carriers by using a given orthogonal spreading code, Cu,n, defined in the frequency domain, so that different users data can be transmitted using the same sub-carriers of Nc. The multiplexed data symbol of the i-th data symbol and m-th subcarrier, Si,m, in OFCDM is thus expressed as

I.

INTRODUCTION

To meet the requirements of expanded broadband wireless access, ITU-R set up WP8F (Working Party 8F), to discuss IMT2000 and beyond in Feb. 2002 [1]. OFDM is a well-known anti-multipath fading technique for broadband wireless systems and is used in digital broadcasting (TV/Audio) and wireless LANs. This technique also seems to be well suited to the downlink of 4G mobile systems. In this paper, we describe the OFDM-based 4G mobile systems for the downlink that can provide data rates of more than 100 Mbps for mobile speeds of more than 200 km/h. To increase channel quality, the system employs a multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) channel. Furthermore, a linear interpolation scheme is used to improve the accuracy of the estimated channel gain under fast fading, We evaluated the performance of two multiplexing schemes: OFCDM and segmented-OFDM. The former, which is based on multi-carrier CDMA (MC-CDMA), spreads each users data in the frequency domain and multiplexes them on the same frequency [2]. The latter, which is referred to as Multiuser OFDM [3], divides all sub-carriers into sub-carrier groups (segments) and assigns them on a user-by-user basis. The key factors of the cellular system are channel quality, spectral efficiency and outage probability (coverage) [4]. Thus, we compared the two multiplexing schemes in the terms of spectral efficiency and outage probability in the required channel quality.

Si , m =

N user u =1

u,n

*Uu, p ,
(1)

n = m mod SF , p = N c * i / SF + m mod( N c / SF ),

where Nuser is the number of users and SF is the spreading factor. In segmented-OFDM, each user is assigned the subcarriers of Nc / Nuser. The multiplexed data symbol in segmented-OFDM is expressed as

S i,m = U u , p , u = m * N user / N c , p = N c * i / N user + m mod( N c / N user ),

(2)

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TABLE I.

SYSTEM PARAMETERS

SF

Radio frequency Bandwidth (B) Number of sub-carrier (Nc) Data modulation OFDM symbol duration (Effective data+ Guard interval) Frame length Number of Tx/Rx antennas Channel coding/decoding

5 GHz 78.336 MHz 1024 QPSK, 16QAM 15.625 sec (13.072 + 2.553 sec) 0.593 msec (32Data + 6Pilot) Tx/Rx= 1/2 or 2/2 Turbo Coding Max-Log MAP Decoding (Iteration = 8)

Power

SF SF #Nuser Nc SF #2 #1
32

Frequency

Time
a) OFCDM

Antenna#1 User#Nuser User#1 Encoding Modulation STBC Pilot IFFT Encode Insertion Multiplexing STBC Pilot IFFT Encode Insertion P/S P/S Guard Interval Insertion Antenna#2 Guard Interval Insertion

#Nuser

Power

#2 #1

Frequency Nc/Nuser

a) Transmitter
Antenna#2 Antenna#1
Pilot

Nc
Channel Estimation w1,k,m Weight Calculation w2,k,m STBC Decode STBC Decode STBC Decode De-multiplexing/ De-modulation/ Decoding

Nc/Nuser Nc/Nuser Time

Data

32
P/S

Guard Interval Deletion

b) segmented-OFDM
Figure 2. Multiplex data symbols mapping

FFT

w1,k,m w2,k,m

for t=1

P,i,m = P, 1 D1,i,m = Si,m ,

for t=2

(3) (4)

b) Receiver
Figure 1. Block diagram of the system

Figure 2 illustrates the multiplexed data symbols mapping in OFCDM and segmented-OFDM. There are 32 data symbols per frame and a total of 6 pilot symbols are embedded in the head, the center and the tail of a frame, as shown in Figure 3. After multiplexing, the STBC encoder encodes the multiplexed symbol sequence, and two consecutive pilot symbols are inserted for a 2x2 MIMO channel [5]. This technique can reduce the fade margin and provide good performance in highmobility environments. The pilot symbols (Pt,i,m) and data symbols (Dt,i,m) of the t-th Tx antenna (t = 1,2), the m-th subcarrier, and the i-th symbol are expressed as

P P2,i,m = P Si*+1,m D2,i,m = * Si1,m

if i is even, if i is odd, if i is even, if i is odd,

(5)

(6)

where P is a pilot pattern (|P| = 1). Z* denotes the complex conjugate of Z.

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III.
P0 P1 D0 D1 D15 P2 P3 D16 D17 D31 P4 P5

EVALUATION CRITERIA IN A MULTI-CELL ENVIRONMENT

GI

Data

Figure 3. Frame format

The key factors of the cellular system are channel quality, spectral efficiency, and outage probability. Thus, we defined the required channel quality as the packet error rate (PER) of 10-2 and compared the two multiplexing schemes in the terms of spectral efficiency and outage probability. Outage probability and spectral efficiency were evaluated according to the following procedure. A. Outage probability Step1) Average received Eb/N0 (Eb/N0req) at the average PER of 10-2 is derived from a link-level simulation (See Section 4.1.). Step2) Average received SIR (SIRreq) at the average PER of 10-2 is calculated using equation (10). It is assumed that all of BSs transmit data at the same power and the same information bit rate for each user.

Figure 3 shows the frame format for the proposed system. The system adopts OFDM modulation, which has the bandwidth of 78.336 MHz divided into 1024 sub-carriers. To eliminate inter-symbol interference due to multipath propagation of which the maximum excess delay is about 2 sec, a guard interval (GI) of 2.55 sec is inserted between symbols. At the receiver as shown in Figure 1b), the OFDM symbol timing is synchronized and the received OFDM symbols are converted into a modulated signal on each sub-carrier. First, the j-th tentative channel gain, r,t,j,m, at the m-th sub-carrier between the t-th transmitter antenna and the r-th receiver antenna is measured by averaging the two consecutive received pilot symbols in the time domain. Thus, it is given as

SIRreq = EbN0req +10log10 (Nm R) + 10log10

Nuser , (10) SF

r , t , j , m =

1 2j j RPr ,i,m * Pt*,i, m , 2 i = 2* 1

where Nm is the number of bits per symbol, and R is the coding rate. In segmented-OFDM, Nuser/SF is set to 1. Step3) The distribution of the average received SIR in a cell is given by system-level simulation (See also Section 4.2.). Step4) Outage probability is given as the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of SIRreq in the SIR distribution. B. Spectral efficiency Spectral efficiency (S bps/Hz/cell) is expressed as

(7)

where RPr,i,m is the m-th sub-carrier component in the i-th received pilot symbol at the r-th received antenna. Next, in order to increase the reliability of r,t,j,m, r,t,j,m is averaged over 3 sub-carriers in the frequency domain.

r ,t , j , m

1 2 (m r ,t , j , m, = 1), 2 m =1 1 m +1 = r ,t , j , m < m N c 1), (1 3 m = m 1 1 Nc (m r ,t , j , m , = N c ), 2 m = N c 1

(8)

S=

Ttrans , N reuse B

(11)

A linear interpolation scheme is employed to improve the accuracy of the estimated channel gain under fast fading. The estimated channel gain of the m-th sub-carrier in the i-th data symbol, hr,t,i,m, can be expressed as

where Ttrans is information bit rate in the given bandwidth B, and Nreuse is the frequency reuse factor. As the parameters to get Ttrans, OFCDM uses Nm and Nuser, while segmented-OFDM uses Nm and R. Table II shows Modulation & Coding Set and the corresponding Ttrans.
TABLE II. MODULATION & CODING SET

hr ,t , i , m =

(16 i ) r , t , j +1, m + i r ,t , j + 2, m 16

, j = i/16.

(9)

OFCDM (SF=16) Modulation Ttrans [Mbps] & Coding QPSK, 3.439* Nuser R=1/2

Combining weights, wr,t,i,m, are calculated using the MMSE algorithm [6]. The combined data sequence is de-multiplexed and de-modulated. Finally, turbo decoding is performed using Max-Log-MAP decoding with the iteration number of 8 to recover the transmitted binary data.

16QAM, R=1/2

6.888* Nuser

segmented-OFDM Modulation Ttrans [Mbps] & Coding QPSK, R=1/3 36.541 QPSK, R =1/2 55.027 QPSK, R =2/3 73.351 QPSK, R =3/4 82.540 16QAM, R =1/3 73.459 16QAM, R =1/2 110.459

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IV.

SIMULATION RESULTS

10
Average received Eb/N0 at the average PER of 10 -2

In this section, we compare the performance of OFCDM and segmented-OFDM, following the evaluation criteria described in Section III. It is assumed that the synchronization of carrier frequency and symbol timing is perfect and all the transmitting timings of base stations are synchronized. A. Link-level simulation We assumed that the channel model is an exponential decay model with 12 paths. Each path suffers from independent Rayleigh fading. The average received power of the l-th path decreased by (l-1) dB relative to the first path, where l=1,2,,12. The path interval was 16 samples (0.2 sec) and the r.m.s. delay spread was 0.593 sec (max excess delay: 2.247 sec). Figure 4 plots the average received Eb/N0 at the average PER of 10-2 as a function of the information bit rate. For Figure 4a) and b), the velocities are 17 km/h (fD = 80 Hz) and 207 km/h (fD = 960 Hz), respectively. With antenna configuration of Tx/Rx = 2/2, the average received Eb/N0 is improved by about 1 to 2 dB as compared with that of Tx/Rx = 1/2. In the case of OFCDM, the both figures show that the average received Eb/N0 increases in accordance with Nuser. This tendency is more noticeable in the case of 16QAM than in QPSK. Since 16QAM has a smaller distance between adjacent signal points compared with QPSK, it is more sensitive to the destruction of orthogonality caused by multi-path fading. In segmentedOFDM, the average received Eb/N0 increases in proportion to the information bit rate. The average received Eb/N0 of OFCDM is larger than that of segmented-OFDM at the same information bit rate regardless of antenna configuration. This result indicates that segmented-OFDM achieves a higher link capacity than does OFCDM in an isolated-cell environment. B. System-level simulation Table III summarizes the system level simulation conditions and Figure 5 shows the hexagonal cell layout that we assumed. In OFCDM, one-cell reuse is used. On the other hand in segmented-OFDM, both one-cell reuse and three-cell reuse are used. It is assumed that a base station is located at the center of each cell and that mobile stations are uniformly distributed among all the cells. All of the mobile stations connect with the base station from which mobile station can receive the largest average signal power. Figure 6 shows the cumulative distribution of average received SIR, at the centered cell, with one-cell reuse and three-cell reuse.

8 6 4 2 0 -2

OFCDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=1/2) OFCDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=1/2) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=1/2) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=1/2) OFCDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=2/2) OFCDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=2/2) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=2/2) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=2/2)

Information bit rate [Mbps]

a) fD =80 Hz

40

80

120

10
Average received Eb/N0 at the average PER of 10
-2

8 6 4 2 0 -2

OFCDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=1/2) OFCDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=1/2) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=1/2) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=1/2) OFCDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=2/2) OFCDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=2/2) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,Tx/Rx=2/2) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,Tx/Rx=2/2)

Information bit rate [Mbps]

b) fD =960 Hz

40

80

120

Figure 4. Average received Eb/N0 at average PER of 10-2 as a function of information bit rate

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TABLE III.

SYSTEM-LEVEL SIMULATION CONDITIONS

Cellular layout Distance dependent path loss factor Shadowing Distribution Standard deviation Correlation MS distribution

19 cell 3.76 Lognormal 8.0dB 0.5 Uniform

F F F F F F F F

F F F F F

F F F F F F
f2 f1 f1

f3 f2 f3 f2 f3

f1 f3 f1 f3 f1

f2 f1 f2 f1 f2 f3

The spectral efficiency of OFCDM is 0.31 bps/Hz/cell for an outage probability of 0.1 and fD = 80 Hz. On the other hand, that of segmented-OFDM is 0.49 bps/Hz/cell. Consequently, segmented-OFDM has about 1.6 times the spectral efficiency of OFCDM. Similarly, for fD = 960 Hz, segmented-OFDM has approximately 1.5 times the spectral efficiency of OFCDM. Regardless of velocity and antenna configuration, segmentedOFDM is superior to OFCDM at all outage probabilities. Additionally, segmented-OFDM allows for layout a cell with a frequency reuse factor of 1 if Tx/Rx = 2/2 and the outage probability of more than 0.1.
OFCDM(QPSK,reuse1) OFCDM(16QAM,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse1)

1.5
Spectral efficiency [bps/Hz/cell]

a) 1 cell reuse

b) 3 cell reuse

Figure 5. Cell structure

0.5

Cumulative distribution function

0.8

0.6

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Outage probability

0.4

a) fD =80Hz
OFCDM(QPSK,reuse1) OFCDM(16QAM,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse1)

0.2

0 -20

-10

0 10 20 30 Average received SIR[dB]

40

50

Spectral efficiency [bps/Hz/cell]

1 cell reuse 3 cell reuse

1.5

Figure 6. Cumulative distribution of average received SIR

Figure 7 plots the spectral efficiency as a function of outage probability at Tx/Rx = 1/2. The spectral efficiency of OFCDM is 0.28 bps/Hz/cell for the outage probability of 0.1 and fD = 80 Hz. On the other hand, that of segmented-OFDM is 0.40 bps/Hz/cell. Consequently, segmented-OFDM has about 1.4 times the spectral efficiency of OFCDM. Similarly, for fD = 960 Hz, segmented-OFDM has approximately 1.3 times the spectral efficiency of OFCDM. However, in segmented-OFDM, it is impossible to layout a cell with a frequency reuse factor of 1 for an outage probability of 0.1. Figure 8 plots the spectral efficiency as a function of outage probability at Tx/Rx = 2/2.

0.5

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Outage probability
b) fD =960Hz
Figure 7. Outage probability versus spectral efficiency at Tx/Rx = 1/2

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1.5
Spectral efficiency [bps/Hz/cell]

OFCDM(QPSK,reuse1) OFCDM(16QAM,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse1)

comparison was that segmented-OFDM is superior to OFCDM at all outage probabilities regardless of mobile velocity or antenna configurations. Furthermore, segmented-OFDM with the MIMO configuration can provide high-quality channels with the one-cell reuse layout, so that complexity of frequency resource management is the same as in OFCDM. These results indicate that segmented-OFDM is the more suitable multiplexing method for broadband mobile systems. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported, in part, by the Telecommunications Advancement Organization of Japan (TAO) under contracted research entitled The research and development of advanced radio signal processing technology for mobile communication systems. The authors would like to thank M. Azuma, T. Taniguchi, and T. Takano for their encouragement and suggestions throughout this work.

0.5

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7
[1] [2]

REFERENCES
http://www.itu.int/ITU-R/study-groups/rsg8/rwp8f/ S. Abeta, H. Atarashi, and M. Sawahashi, Forward link capacity of coherent DS-CDMA and MC-CDMA broadband packet wireless access in a multi-cell environment, IEEE VTC2000-Fall, pp.2213-2218, Sept. 2000. E. Lawrey, Multiuser OFDM, in Proceedings ISSPA 99, pp 761-764, 1999. H. Sampath, S. Talwar, J. Tellade, V. Erceg and A. Paulraj, A FourthGeneration MIMO-OFDM Broadband Wireless System: Design, Performance, and Field Trial Results, IEEE Commun. Mag., pp.143149, Sept. 2002. S. M. Alamouti, Simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol.16, no.8, pp14511458, Oct. 1988. A. Chouly, A. Brajal, and S. Jourdan, Orthgonal multicarrier techniques applied to direct sequence spread spectrum CDMA system, Proc. IEEE GLOBECOM93, pp.1723-1728, Nov. 1993.

Outage probability
a) fD = 80 Hz
OFCDM(QPSK,reuse1) OFCDM(16QAM,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse3) segmented-OFDM(QPSK,reuse1) segmented-OFDM(16QAM,reuse1)

[3] [4]

1.5
Spectral efficiency [bps/Hz/cell]

[5]

1
[6]

0.5

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

Outage probability
b) fD = 960 Hz
Figure 8. Outage probability versus spectral efficiency at Tx/Rx = 2/2

V.

CONCLUSION

We proposed OFDM-based 4G mobile systems for the downlink that can provide data rates of more than 100 Mbps at mobile speeds of more than 200 km/h. To increase channel quality and link capacity, the system employs MIMO configurations, and to improve the accuracy of the estimated channel gain under fast fading, a linear interpolation scheme is employed. We evaluated the performance of OFCDM and segmented-OFDM in the terms of spectral efficiency and outage probability at the average PER of 10-2. The result of the

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