Orthogonal Frequency

Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

Flow oF today’s class

❖ OFDM Fundamentals
❖ OFDM Spectrum
❖ OFDM System essentials
❖ OFDM implementation
❖ Cyclic prefix and its Role in OFDM
❖ Advantages of OFDM
❖ OFDMA

9/23/2021 2
 Activity for OFDMA

[Link] (Duplexing)

Video 1: Duplexing
[Link] FDD and TDD.
[Link] (Multiple Access)

Video 2:
[Link] which generation FDMA was used and what was the channel bandwidth?
2. List technologies w.r.t. Mobile communication where TDMA is used.
3. Which multiple access technique is used in Third generation of mobile communication system?
[Link] are the modulation techniques used for better spectral efficiency?
[Link] are the advantages of OFDMA?
 Video 3:OFDMA

[Link] (OFDMA)

[Link] all complexities in wireless channel along with their remedies.

[Link] is the effect of delay spread ?
[Link] to reduce effect of delay spread?
▪ Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a digital multi-
‐carrier modulation technique extending the concept of single subcarrier
modulation by using multiple sub-‐carriers over the channel.

▪ Rather than transmit a high-‐rate stream of data with a single carrier, OFDM
makes use of a large number of closely spaced orthogonal sub-‐carriers that
are transmitted in parallel.

▪ Each sub-‐carrier is modulated with a conventional digital modulation scheme

(such as QPSK, 16QAM, etc.) at a lower symbol rate. However, the
combination of many sub-‐carriers enables data rates similar to conventional
single-‐carrier modulation schemes using equivalent bandwidths.
9/23/2021 6
OFDM Benefits
▪ The first reason is spectral efficiency, also called bandwidth efficiency. What
that term really means is that you can transmit more data faster in a given
bandwidth in the presence of noise. The measure of spectral efficiency is bits
per second per Hertz, or bps/Hz.

▪ For a given chunk of spectrum space, different modulation methods will give
you widely varying maximum data rates for a given bit error rate (BER) and
noise level.
▪ Simple digital modulation methods like amplitude shift keying (ASK) and
frequency shift keying (FSK) are simple but don’t give the best BER
performance. BPSK and QPSK do much better.

9/23/2021 7
▪ OFDM Benefits

▪ QAM is very good but more susceptible to noise and low signal levels
issues. Code division multiple access (CDMA) methods are even
better performance.

▪ But none is better than OFDM with respect to attaining the maximum
data capacity out of a given channel bandwidth.

▪ It approaches the Shannon limit defining channel capacity C in bits

per second (bps).

9/23/2021 8
 ▪ Multicarrier Communication Systems (Uses Multiple Oscillators)
What is the problem with this architecture?

Channel
Channel

Answer: It is nearly impossible to keep multiple oscillators in synchronization with

each other. And it is difficult to have hundreds of oscillators in a practical system.
9/23/2021 9
Discrete Multitone (aka Frequency Division Multiplexing)
The basic idea of Discrete Multitone (DMT) is to split the available bandwidth into a
large number of sub-‐channels.ADSL2 is an example application of DMT.

ADSL2
POTS

DMT uses available frequencies on the telephone line and splits them into 256/512 equal
sized frequency bins of 4.3125 kHz each.
9/23/2021 10
 SELF Reflection
[Link] are the main benefits of OFDM?

[Link] is high data rate achieved in OFDM?

[Link] Watch this video to understand OFDM.

Write these answers in your own course journal.

9/23/2021
Recall from Fourier Transform

Spectrum of one OFDM Sub-‐channel OFDM Spectrum

9/23/2021 12
 OFDM Packs Sub-‐channels Closer Together

Four sub-‐channelsshown

▪ OFDM divides each channel into many narrower subcarriers.

▪ The spacing is such that these subcarriers are orthogonal so they don’t interfere with one
another in spite of the lack of guard bands between them.
▪ This results from the subcarrier spacing equal to the reciprocal of symbol time. All subcarriers
have a complete number of sine wave cycles that sum to zero upon demodulation.
Spectrum of OFDM Signal Transmission

8 sub-‐carriers
In OFDM the Sub-‐Carriers are Orthogonal
 OFDM Summary
▪ Parallel data streams (all at lower data rates)
large number of subcarriers without guard bands
▪ Data coding based upon amplitude modulation Multiple subcarriers are
multiplexed into one symbol
▪ Subcarriers are computed using IFFT (i.e., Inverse Fast Fourier Transform)
They are spaced at precise frequencies and phases This spacing
selection provides orthogonality
▪ Orthogonality Principle results in close packing of subcarriers Provides for
multi-‐userdiversity
▪ Synchronization using pilot signals
 Block diagram of an OFDM System

OFDM
Serial data Serial to Signal
Encode
Parallel Cyclic
Source parallel IFFT to Serial prefix

Implementation of OFDM deals with application of Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) to

modulation and demodulation processes to generate carriers orthogonal to each other.
In conventional system, IFFT (Inverse Fast Fourier Transform) is used at transmitter side
and FFT is used in receiver side.

9/23/2021 17
 Implementation of OFDM
▪ OFDM is accomplished using digital signal processing (DSP).

▪ You can program IFFT and FFT math functions on any fast PC, but it is
usually done using a special DSP IC, or an appropriately programmed
FPGA, or hardwired digital logic.

▪ With today’s super-‐fast chips, even complex math routines like the FFT are
relatively easy to implement.

▪ In brief, you can put it all on a single IC chip

9/23/2021 18
What Does Orthogonality Mean?
Subcarrier Orthogonality
 Example: OFDM Subcarriers in 802.11a/g Wi-‐Fi
Each 20 MHz channel, whether it's 802.11a/g/n/ac, is composed of 64 sub-‐carriers spaced 312.5
KHz apart. This spacing is chosen because we use 64-‐point FFT sampling. 802.11a/g use 48
subcarriers for data, 4 for pilot, and 12 as null subcarriers. 802.11n/ac use 52 subcarriers for
data, 4 for pilot, and 8 as null.

WiFi channels

A standard Wi-Fi symbol is 4 s, composed of a 3.2 s IFFT useful symbol duration plus 0.8 s guard interval.
(When using a shorter guard interval of 0.4 s then the total symbol time is reduced to 3.6 s).
OFDM Sub-‐Carriers with Guard-‐bands & Pilot Signals
OFDM Performs To Reduce the Problem of Fading

Time delay is evident

Multipath destroys orthogonality. The figure shows two copies of the signal (direct path
and reflected path with time difference).
Adding a Cyclic Prefix
9/23/2021 25
9/23/2021 26
 Cyclic Prefix

Copy

A cyclic prefix is formed by part of the OFDM symbol which is copied to the beginning of the
symbol period.
The purpose of the cyclic prefix is to combat ISI and intra-symbol interference. The cyclic
prefix is a guard time made up of a replica of the time-domain OFDM waveform. The basic
premise is to replicate part of the back of the OFDM signal to the front to create the guard
period
A guard-‐timeinterval is used to increase the robustness of OFDM.
Major Advantage of OFDM

Immunity to selective fading:

➢ One of the main advantages of OFDM is that is more resistant to
frequency selective fading than single carrier systems because it divides the
overall channel into multiple narrowband signals that are affected
individually as flat fading sub-channels.

9/23/2021 28
SELF Reflection
[Link]
should the subcarriers be orthogonal in
OFDM ?

[Link] is the role of Cyclic Prefix in OFDM ?

[Link]

Watch this video to understand OFDMA

[Link]

Write these answers in your own course journal.

9/23/2021
▪ Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA)

▪ is a multi-user version of the popular orthogonal frequency-division

multiplexing (OFDM) digital modulation scheme.

▪ Multiple access is achieved in OFDMA by assigning subsets

of subcarriers to individual users.

▪ This allows simultaneous low-data-rate transmission from several users.

9/23/2021 30
9/23/2021 31
▪ In OFDMA, the radio resources are two-dimensional (2D) regions over time
(an integer number of OFDM symbols) and frequency (a number of
contiguous or non-contiguous sub-carriers). The difference between OFDM
and OFDMA is illustrated in Figure

9/23/2021 32
▪ OFDMA employs multiple closely spaced sub-carriers, but the sub-carriers
are divided into groups of sub-carriers where each group is called a resource
block.
▪ The grouping of sub-carriers into groups of resource blocks is referred to as
sub-channelization.
▪ The sub-carriers that form a resource block do not need to be physically
adjacent.
▪ In the downlink, a resource block may be allocated to different users.
▪ In the uplink, a user may be assigned to one or more resource blocks.

9/23/2021 33
Summary of today’s class

❖ OFDM Fundamentals
❖ OFDM Spectrum
❖ OFDM System essentials
❖ OFDM implementation
❖ Cyclic prefix and its Role in OFDM
❖ Advantages of OFDM
❖ OFDMA
End of Module1 and 2

9/23/2021 34