International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (IJCSEE) Volume 2, Issue 3 (2014) ISSN 23204028 (Online)

Implementation of OFDMA and Multiple

Antenna Techniques in WiMAX and LTE
Saurabh Dixit, and Himanshu Katiyar
interface[2].
The
Third
Generation(3G)
standard
specifications were laid down by ITU and were referred to as
International
Mobile
Telecommunications-2000(IMT2000)[3]. IMT-2000 laid more emphasis on flexibility to
support different environments and ability for spectrum
sharing and service provisioning[4]. There was a paradigm
shift from narrowband to wideband systems. Hence, the air
interface migrated to wideband CDMA from narrowband
CDMA in 3G systems. Third Generation Partnership
Project(3GPP) and 3GPP2 are the two main groups of ITU
which developed the 3G standards. 3GPP group manages the
Universal Mobile Telecommunication Standard[UMTS]
which evolved from GSM and applied Wideband Code
Division Multiple Access(WCDMA). 3GPP2 manages
CDMA2000 that evolved from IS-95[5]. CDMA offers
capacity advantage and inherent resistance to interference
along with flexibility at high data rates as compared to its
preceding multiple access technologies[6]. However at high
data rates, CDMA suffers from high computational
complexity at the receiver for channel equalization or user
separation[7-8]. The traditional CDMA was a Single Carrier
Modulation(SCM) technique and suffered from Inter symbol
interference at high data rate. In [9] it was proposed to
implement Multi-Carrier Modulation(MCM) since the long
symbol time in MCM provided greater immunity to fading,
and there was less interference at the receiver due to
equalization as compared to SCM. Thus, MCM started
gaining interest as a candidate for air interface for next
generation cellular system [10-11].Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplexing(OFDM) is a spectrum efficient
multiple carrier transmission scheme which emerged as a
strong candidate for 4G standards[12]. OFDM employs
discrete fourier transform to implement MCM[13] and uses
256 point Inverse Fast Fourier transform(IFFT) for an indoor
environment[12]. Fig. 1[14] depicts a simple OFDM
implementation. By means of digital signal processing the
bandwidth in divided into sub-carriers which are orthogonal
in nature, thus providing a robust interface impervious to
fading.
Orthogonal
Frequency
Division
Multiple
Access(OFDMA) aims at outdoor broadband wireless access
which may also include cumbersome Non- Light of
sight(NLOS) environment. OFDMA uses more carriers
(2048 or 4096 IFFT/FFT).

AbstractThe past two decades have witnessed giant strides in

the field of communication. Wireless technology is the technology of
choice owing to its device portability and user mobility. The
evolution of Wireless Communication technology has made the
transition from 1G to 4G standards and beyond. This transition from
one to another standard has been fuelled by demand from an upbeat
mobile consumer round the globe for more bandwidth at a higher
data rate. The contemporary mobile devices such as smart phones
are equipped with numerous applications and require more resource.
Spectrum being a scarce resource ought to be utilized optimally.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing tends to
utilize
optimally the available bandwidth and yields high Spectrum
Efficiency. With the ability to blend easily with multiple antenna
technologies, high resilience to Inter Symbol Interference, capacity
to support high data rates, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access provides a suitable air interface for the 4G standards like
WiMAX and LTE. This article provides a comprehensive overview
of the implementation of orthogonal frequency division multiple
access along with multiple antenna schemes in the two dominant 4G
standards, WiMAX and LTE. Upon evaluation, it is demonstrated
that WiMAX is more suited to exploit the frequency diversity
whereas LTE can better exploit the Multi-user diversity. The
performance of both these standards is evaluated for challenging
channel conditions.

Keywords LTE, MU-MIMO, OFDMA, WiMAX.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE demand for high speed mobile broadband access at

low cost to operators and end users has been gaining
momentum over the past decade. The communication
industry has been striving to evolve technologies to meet the
end. These evolving technologies have defined the
Telecommunication Standards, which signify a defined
rallying point[1]. With each evolving standard, the air
interface has also undergone an enhancement. International
Telecommunication Union(ITU),
the United Nations
Organization chartered to support telecommunication has
been entrusted to define standards. The First Generation(1G)
standards such as Advanced Mobile Phone Services(AMPS)
utilized Frequency Division Multiple Access(FDMA) as their
air interface. Second Generation(2G) standards such as
Global System for Mobile Communication utilized Time
Division Multiple Access(TDMA)[2] while IS-95 applied
Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) as their air

Saurabh Dixit, BBD University, India Email id: saurabh2911@ieee.org

Himanshu
Katiyar,
BBD
University,
India,
email
katiyarhimanshu@gmail.com

A Multiple Antenna Techniques

The concept of diversity, which improves link reliability is
central to the principles of Wireless Communication. The use

id:

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International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (IJCSEE) Volume 2, Issue 3 (2014) ISSN 23204028 (Online)

of spatially separated multiple antennas enables the

application of principles of diversity. Multiple antenna
systems, commonly

Fig. 1 A simplified Block diagram of an OFDM system

standards, IEEE 802.16a/d to develop IEEE 802.16e to

support mobility[21]. This standard is often referred to as
Mobile WiMAX, which deploys both OFDMA and multiple
antenna techniques to improve the overall system capacity
and spectral efficiency. WiMAX can be deployed as both last
mile broadband access as well as a backhaul to cellular
networks.

referred to as, Multiple-Input Multiple-Output(MIMO) are

utilized in order to achieve a Capacity gain, a diversity gain
or
an antenna gain[15-17]. Hence it improves the performance
by enhancing the bit rate or the signal-to-noise-ratio of the
wireless system, provided the wireless links experience
independent fading. In the seminal work on transmit
diversity, [18] demonstrates that a diversity order of 2M is
achieved for two transmit antennas and M receive antennas
without the need for bandwidth expansion or any feedback
from the receiver to the transmitter. The MIMO techniques
can be classified into Spatial Diversity, Spatial Multiplexing
and Beamforming. Spatial Diversity aims to achieve diversity
gain, which refers to an improved error performance. Spatial
Multiplexing accomplishes Multiplexing Gain that implies
the achieved gain in bit rate as compared to single antenna
system. Beamforming techniques accomplish an enhanced
Signal-to-Noise-ratio(SNR) by steering the beam pattern of
transmit and receive antennas in a desired direction while
suppressing in the direction where the signal is not required.
Thus Beamforming technique targets Antenna gain[19]. The
advantage of multiple antenna techniques depends upon the
same multipath fading effect which is considered deleterious
in single antenna system. Fig. 2 depicts the benefits of
Multiple Antenna techniques[20]. There exist a trade-off
between Spectrum Efficiency and Power Efficiency in the
form of high bit rate and small error rate. Both these
technologies, OFDM and MIMO can be blended together to
reap their combined benefits. Thus MIMO-OFDM has
become the air interface for Fourth Generation(4G)
technologies like Long Term Evolution(LTE) and World
Wide Interoperability for Microwave Access(WiMAX).
Section II describes the implementation of MIMO-OFDM in
WiMAX and LTE while Section III does a performance
evaluation in varying channel conditions. Finally the
conclusions and future directions are inferred

Figure 3 illustrates a WiMAX reference model, which

comprises four logical parts namely, Mobile station(MS),
Network
Access
Provider(NAP),
network
Service
Provider(NSP) and Internet[22]. IEEE 802.16 made further
amendments to meet and exceed the requirements of IMTAdvanced(IMT-A) as laid down by ITU, as a benchmark for
4G standards[23]. This standard known as WiMAXv2(IEEE
802.16m), incorporated multi-carrier technology and uses
OFDMA in both the downlink and the uplink[24]. The
number of sub-carriers used depends upon the available
bandwidth, thus IEEE 802.16m uses scalable OFDMA[25].
The scalability of OFDMA renders it suitable for deployment
for different bandwidths, notwithstanding maintaining its
subcarrier spacing at the same time. In WiMAX, Time
Division Duplexing(TDD) is more prevalent with a typical
5ms frame and common deployment bandwidths of 5 and 10
MHz. In order to fulfil the IMT-A requirements, IEEE
802.16m deploys Multi-user MIMO(MU-MIMO) where one
time-frequency resource can be allocated to multiple users
who are spatially separated to exploit multi-user diversity[26].
MU-MIMO is particularly suitable for providing large sector
throughputs in a region that is hampered by heavy data
traffic.
A MIMO-OFDM IN LTE
LTE(Release 8 and 9) has been evolved by 3GPP group and
was designed to have a highly flexible radio interface. OFDM
forms the core of LTE downlink radio transmission, while
Single Carrier frequency division multiple access(SC-FDMA)
is deployed for the uplink due to Power EfficiencyHelpful
Hints considerations. Spectrum Flexibility in duplex scheme,
support for multi-antenna transmission technology has been
an integral part of LTE. Figure 4[27] describes the different
schemes of multiple-antenna techniques that are defined by
the specific scenario. Thus, LTE supports on the downlink
transmit diversity, spatial multiplexing in the form of SUMIMO as well as MU-MIMO along with beamforming. LTE
was further enhanced towards LTE-Advanced(LTE-A) to
fulfill as well as exceed the requirements of IMT-A. In 2010,

II. MIMO-OFDM IN WIMAX

The evolution of WiMAX has been the collaborative effort
of WiMAX forum along with IEEE 802.16 group, which was
formed to develop air interface for Wireless Broadband.
Initially, WiMAX was designed to support fixed applications,
but in year 2005 IEEE 802.16 group amended the previous
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International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (IJCSEE) Volume 2, Issue 3 (2014) ISSN 23204028 (Online)

A has evolved from LTE, hence it can be easily implemented

in a cost-efficient manner, whenever required.

ITU approved the proposal of 3GPP(Release 10) aka LTE-A

and termed it as an IMT-A technology[28]. This
enhancement towards LTE-A is brought about by employing
a variety of techniques like Carrier aggregation, enhanced
multi-antenna support, support for relaying functionality,
improved support for heterogeneous deployment. Since, LTE-

Fig. 2 Multiple Antenna Techniques and their benefits

III. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF WIMAX AND LTE

WiMAXv2(IEEE 802.16m) and LTE-Advanced(3GPP
Release 10) have adopted OFDMA based physical. The
deployment of advanced MIMO plays a pivotal role in
meeting the requirements specified by IMT-Advanced. A
generic MIMO-OFDM is shown in Fig. 5[29], where Mt
transmit and Mr receive antennas are used. The incoming bit
stream is mapped into N number of symbols, where N
represent the number of IFFT point. These symbols are then
encoded into a Codeword matrix of size NT M t , T is the
number of OFDM blocks, M t is the transmitting antenna.
The codeword matrix is represented as:

c11 c1M

C=
cT cT
M
1

Fig. 3 WiMAX Reference Model

(1)
Cyclic prefix is appended on each OFDM block to
j

ameliorate the effect of delay spread and cn is transmitted

from jth transmit antenna and nth OFDM block. The signal
passes though the MIMO channel where the reverse operation
including FFT and cyclic prefix removal is performed for
signal detection.
Fig. 6[30] shows a comparison between WiMAX and LTE
system for multiple antennas, where WiMAX has a slightly
better Error performance, however this is at the price of
higher bandwidth requirement. There exist a trade-off
between Spectrum Efficiency and Error Performance. Both
LTE and WiMAX, use OFDMA in the downlink but differ on
the uplink. While WiMAX uses scalable OFDMA, LTE
deploys Single Carrier FDMA(SC-FDMA) to counter the
effect of Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio(PAPR)[31]. This
reduction in PAPR by 3-5 dB leads to enhanced coverage or
throughput of cell edge users. The frequency diversity is

Fig. 4 Multiple Access Technique in LTE

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International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (IJCSEE) Volume 2, Issue 3 (2014) ISSN 23204028 (Online)

bandwidth scalability. The selected deployment scenarios are

Indoor Hotspot(InH), Urban Micro-cell(UMi), Urban Macrocell(UMa) and Rural Macro-cell(RMa). Table I[33] specifies
the evaluation configuration parameters. [34] provides a
LTE(Release 8) and LTE-A downlink performance summary
and clearly specifies that LTE is unable to meet the IMT-A
criterion, especially for urban environments. However LTE-A
downlink performance not only meets the IMT-A criterion
but also exceeds it. On the uplink LTE-A employs SC-FDMA
to combat the effect of PAPR. Both TDD as well as Frequency
Division Duplexing(FDD) is used for the radio interface
technology. Table II[35] succinctly compares the evaluation
result of LTE-A for uplink and downlink with those of ITURadio-communication(ITU-R) requirement. The results
clearly justify the selection of LTE-A as a candidate for IMTA technology.

better exploited in WiMAX as compared to LTE. This is

achieved by suitable mapping of subcarriers to subchannels,
and by coding and interleaving[32]. Since each user will
experience different frequency selectivity specific to their
location, hence Multi-user diversity(MUD) is deployed in
LTE. The use of OFDMA further enables LTE to exploit the
time variation of the channel as well, a distinct advantage
over 3.5G systems. Fig. 7[32] shows a typical scenario where
each user experiences different frequency selectivity. LTE is
better equipped to employ Multi-user diversity as compared to
WiMAX due to its small frame time which leads to quick
feedback rate. In [33] an explicit criterion of performance is
defined for IMT-Advanced technologies. Hence the
performance evaluation of

Fig. 7 Frequency distributed data mapping in LTE downlink

Fig. 5 MIMO-OFDM System Model

Deployment
scenario

RMa

BS antenna
height

6m

10m

25m

35m

Max. No. of BS
antenna

8 Rx

8 Rx

8 Rx

8 Rx

8Tx

8Tx

8Tx

8Tx

BS transmit
power

Fig . 6 BER performance of WiMAX and LTE for

1 X 2 Antenna Configuration and receive diversity

TABLE I
EVALUATION CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
InH
UMi
UMa

24 dBm
(40 MHz)
21 dBm
(20 MHz)

41 dBm
(10 MHz)
44 dBm
(20 MHz)

46 dBm
(10 MHz)
49 dBm
(20 MHz)

46 dBm
(10 MHz)
49 dBm
(20 MHz)

No. of User
terminal
Antenna

2 Rx

2 Rx

2 Rx

2 Rx

2Tx

2Tx

2Tx

2Tx

Carrier
Frequency

3.4 GHz

2.5 GHz

2 GHz

800 MHz

TABLE II
ITU-R REQUIREMENT AND ANALYTICAL RESULT FOR LTE
DOWNLINK AND UPLINK
Spectral
ITU-R
FDD radio
TDD
interface
interface
Efficiency(b/s/Hz)
requirement
Downlink
15
16.3
15.8
Uplink
6.75
8.4
7.9

LTE-A and WiMAX(v2) should be based on the criterion

laid down by ITU-R[33]. The key characteristic outlined for
evaluation are Cell spectral efficiency, cell edge user spectral
efficiency, bandwidth, peak spectral efficiency, channel

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International Journal of Computer Science and Electronics Engineering (IJCSEE) Volume 2, Issue 3 (2014) ISSN 23204028 (Online)
[24] I Fang Ku, Yih Shen Chen, Paul Cheng, Youngsoo Yuk, Ronny Kim and
Jin Samkwak, Multi-carrier technology for 4G WiMAX System ,
Overview of Mobile WiMAX Technology and Evolution IEEE
Communications Magazine, pp 50-58 August 2010
[25] J.G. Andrews, A Ghosh and R Muhamed, Fundamentals of WiMAX:
Understanding Broadband Wireless Networking Prentice Hall, 2007
[26] Qinghua Li ,Guangjie Li, Wookbong Lee, Moon-il Lee, David Mazzarese,
Bruno Clerkx and Zexian Li, MIMO Techniques in WiMAX and LTE: A
Feature Overview IEEE Communications Magazine May 2010
[27] David Astely, Erik Dahlman, Anders Furuskar, Ylva jading, Magnus
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[28] Stefan Parkvall, Anders Furuskar and Erik Dahlman, Evolution of LTE
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Wireless System pp 32-43 IEEE Wireless Communications June 2007
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IV. CONCLUSION
This paper provides an overview of the implementation
aspects of OFDMA and multiple access technologies in 4G
networks. The dominant 4G standards, WiMAX and LTE are
targeted. The simulation results prove that LTE-Advanced
not only fulfills the criterion of IMT-A but also surpasses
them and can be considered as a candidate for beyond 4G
technology.
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Saurabh Dixit received his B. E. degree from B.I.T, Ranchi, India in 2000.
Since then he has been in the teaching and research field. An IEEE certified
Wireless Communication Professional, currently he is working towards his Ph.D
in the field of Wireless Communication from BBD University, Lucknow, India.
His research interests are in the areas of Advanced antenna technologies, MIMOOFDM , 4G Technology. Email id: saurabh2911@ieee.org
Himanshu Katiyar received his B.Tech degree in the 2001 and M.Tech
degree in 2005. He obtained his Ph.D in 2011 from Indian Institute of
technology, Guwahati. Since then he has been actively involved in teaching and
research work and currently working as Associate Professor in BBD Group,
Lucknow, India. His research interest include Co-operative Communications,
relay networks and Advanced MIMO configurations. Email id:
katiyarhimanshu@gmail.com

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