D. J.

SANGHVI COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

ADVANTAGES OF
SC-FDE OVER
OFDM
SUBJECT: MILLIMETER WAVE
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
ElijahZac

INTRODUCTION
This report is written so as to emphasize the advantages of a single-single-carrier frequency
domain equalizer(SC-FDE) with and without decision feedback equalization (DFE)
compared to the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology. SC-FDE is
a promising technique and it solves the power consumption issue of power amplifier (PA) in
high rate (beyond gigabit/s) millimetre wave wireless systems, and lets the millimeter wave
related products and devices become commercially viable. The issue of power consumption
of PA in millimeter wave wireless systems is identified and the potential benefits in using the
SC-FDE technique due to its inherently low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) to replace
the OFDM technique are emphasized.
OFDM DRAWBACKS AND SOLUTION
SC-FDE gives the millimeter wave communication systems distinct advantages over its
competitor, OFDM. It is known that OFDM suffers from a number of drawbacks, including a
large PAPR, intolerance to amplifier nonlinearities, and high sensitivity to carrier frequency
offsets. These problems become extremely severe when radio frequency goes to the
millimeter wave range. The OFDM technology does have a significant advantage of offering
the robustness against frequency selective fading. An alternative solution to ISI mitigation is
the use of single-carrier (SC) modulation combined with frequency domain equalization
(FDE). The complexity and performance of SC-FDE systems are comparable to that of
OFDM while avoiding the above drawbacks associated with multi-carrier (MC)
implementation. On the other hand, FDE does not represent an optimal solution to signal
detection over ISI channels and SC systems cannot certainly offer the same flexibility as
OFDM systems in the management of bandwidth and energy resources, both in single and
multi-user communications. All these considerations have made a detailed analysis of SCFDE techniques as well as a careful comparison between SC-FDE and OFDM much more
critical.
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER OF OFDM
The transmitter and receiver block diagrams of OFDM wireless systems are shown in Figures
below.
OFDM TRANSMITTER:

The transmitter comprises a quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulator, an inverse

fast Fourier transformation (IFFT), a cyclic prefix insertion module, a radio frequency (RF)
modulator, and an antenna. Firstly, an input signal to be modulated and transmitted is sent to
the QAMmodule. The IFFT module applies an inverse fast Fourier transformation (FFT)
transformation on the signal received from the QAM module. The cyclic prefix insertion

module inserts a cyclic prefix into the signal received from the IFFT module. The RF module
converts the signal received from the cyclic prefix insertion module into a modulated RF
signal, which is then radiated by the antenna.
OFDM RECEIVER

The receiver comprises an antenna, a RF receiver, a cyclic prefix removal module, a FFT
module, a channel equalizer, a channel estimation module, and a QAM demodulator. The
antenna converts the received electromagnetic signal into a RF electrical signal, which is then
converted into a baseband signal by the RF receiver.After removing the inserted cyclic prefix
by the cyclic prefix removal module, the received signal is then passed through the FFT
module. The channel estimation module estimates the channel quality and other
characteristics of the dynamic wireless channel between the transmitter and receiver, which
are required by the channel equalizer to compensate for the frequency response of the
wireless channel. The output of the channel equalizer is then passed to the QAM demodulator
for recovering the transmitted data.
TRANSMITTER AND RECEIVER OF SC-FDE
In contrast to the MC nature of OFDM wireless systems shown in Figures above, the
transmitter and receiver block diagrams of SC-FDE wireless systems are depicted in Figures
below. The transmitter and receiver of SC-FDE operate based on single carrier.
SC-FDE TRANSMITTER

The transmitter of SC-FDE wireless systems shown above appears to be similar to that of
OFDM systems illustrated, except that it does not contain an IFFT module.

SC-FDE RECEIVER

Likewise, the receiver of SC-FDE systems depicted in Figure above looks very similar to that
of OFDM, except that it has an extra IFFT module between the channel equalizer and the
QAM demodulator. It is clear that the complexity of SC-FDE wireless systems depicted in
above Figure is almost the same as that of OFDM wireless systems. For a SC-FDE system,
the transmitter and receiver can be merged in a single mobile device. Moreover, the whole
transceiver can be integrated in a semiconductor chip, which also comprises additional
modules to extend the functions for the customer.
ADVANTAGES OF SC-FDE OVER OFDM
The main advantages of SC-FDE systems are listed as follows:

The energy of individual symbols is transmitted over the whole available frequency
spectrum. Therefore, narrow band notches within the channel transfer function have
only a small impact on the performance. For OFDM systems, however, the narrow
band notches would degrade the performance of transmitted symbols assigned over
the relevant subcarriers. Of course, the diversity can be regained partly by utilizing a
soft decision error control decoder with some performance penalty.
Lower PAPR ratio for the radiated signal makes the PA from the transmitter (Tx) side
more energy efficient and cheaper, especially for the millimeter wave wireless
systems.
SC-FDE is robust to the effect of phase noise, which makes the local oscillator (LO)
simpler, especially for the millimeter wave wireless systems.
A smaller number of analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) bits, significantly reduces
the design and system cost for high rate applications.
The carrier frequency error between the Tx side and the receiver (Rx) side can destroy
the orthogonality between subcarriers and introduce the inter-subcarrier interference
for OFDM systems. However, it has less effect on single-carrier systems with
frequency domain equalization.
Therefore, SC-FDE is more suitable to the user scenarios where a simple transmitter with less
power consumption is desired, while at the same time the receiver can be complex and have
relatively high power consumption, such as high definition television scenarios. In terms of
power consumption and environment impact, SC-FDE with its low PAPR ratio is definitely
an attractive technology for millimeter wave wireless systems.

PAPR COMPARISON BETWEEN SC-FDE AND OFDM

An OFDM system has to back off considerably more than SC-FDE. If multiple power
amplifiers are used, the power back-off is not necessary, but the power consumption increases
with higher PAPR. For Class A amplifiers, the power consumption is proportional to the peak
power. The higher the PAPR is, the higher the power consumption will be. Also, the cost
increases almost proportionally with the power consumption. An example below
demonstrates that a SC-FDE has lower PAPR than an OFDM system.

When PAPR is considered at Pr (PAPR>)=0.01 and Psat is assumed to be 16 dBm, a PAPR

comparison between SC-FDE and OFDMis shown in Figure above. It is clear that PAPR gain
(between SC-FDE and OFDM) for quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK), non-square 8-ary
QAM and 16-ary QAM is about 4.7 dB, 3.6 dB, and 3.0 dB, respectively.
PERFORMANCE COMPARISON BETWEEN SC-FDE AND OFDM
Performance comparisons between OFDM and SC-FDE wireless systems are shown below.
When a nonlinear PA model is used and about 5.5 dB output back-off (OBO) is considered,
the performance comparison between OFDM and SCFDE wireless systems is illustrated in

the figure below, whereby Rc is the code rate. It is concluded from the figure below that
better packet error rate (PER) performance can be achieved when the SC-FDE technology is
used for millimeter wave wireless personal area networks (WPAN).

CONCLUSION
SC-FDE is a promising technique and it solves the power consumption issue of power
amplifier (PA) in high rate (beyond gigabit/s) millimetre wave wireless systems, and lets the
millimeter wave related products and devices become commercially viable. The issue of
power consumption of PA in millimeter wave wireless systems was identified and the
potential benefits in using the SC-FDE technique due to its inherently low peak-to-average
power ratio (PAPR) to replace the OFDM technique have been emphasized.