4888 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO.
7, JULY 2018
A New Filter-Bank Multicarrier System:
The Linearly Processed FBMC System
Jintae Kim, Student Member, IEEE, Yosub Park , Member, IEEE, Sungwoo Weon, Student Member, IEEE,
Jinkyo Jeong, Student Member, IEEE, Sooyong Choi , Member, IEEE, and Daesik Hong , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract— In this paper, we propose a linearly processed
filter-bank multicarrier (LP-FBMC) system which employs
faster than Nyquist signaling to remove residual intrinsic
interferences. We represent the FBMC transceiver in a matrix
form and then apply singular value decomposition-based linear
transformation in order to convert the overlapped FBMC
data into parallel independent interference-free data. This
interference-free characteristic of the proposed LP-FBMC
system enables the use of conventional multiple antenna
configurations. Performance evaluations show that out-of-band
emission performance of the proposed LP-FBMC system is
superior to those of conventional quadrature amplitude-based
FBMC (FBMC-QAM) and orthogonal frequency division
multiplexing systems. Furthermore, the proposed LP-FBMC
system outperforms the conventional FBMC-QAM in terms of bit
error rate performance when high order modulation is employed
under time-varying channel and multiuser uplink environment.
Index Terms— FBMC, MIMO, singular value decomposition,
faster than Nyquist.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE filter-bank multicarrier (FBMC) system has been
investigated as one of the alternative waveforms to
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) for future
wireless communication systems [1]. There are three advan-
tages typically associated with the FBMC system: i) low
out-of-band emission (OOBE), ii) CP-free transmission, and
iii) robustness to the asynchronous environment.
Among the various FBMC systems, the most thoroughly
studied is the offset quadrature amplitude modulation-based
Manuscript received November 18, 2017; revised February 24, 2018;
accepted April 22, 2018. Date of publication May 16, 2018; date of current
version July 10, 2018. This work was supported in part by the National
Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) through the Korea Government (MSIT)
under Grant NRF-2018R1A2A1A05021029 and in part by the Institute for
Information and Communications Technology Promotion through the Korea
Government–Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) (Devel-
opment on the core technologies of transmission, modulation, and coding
with low-power and low-complexity for massive connectivity in the IoT
environment) under Grant 2016-0-00181. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this paper and approving it for publication was L. Lai.
(Corresponding author: Daesik Hong.)
J. Kim, S. Weon, J. Jeong, S. Choi, and D. Hong are with the School
of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 120-749,
South Korea (e-mail: in3614@yonsei.ac.kr; again@yonsei.ac.kr;
uranus0917@yonsei.ac.kr; csyong@yonsei.ac.kr; daesikh@yonsei.ac.kr).
Y. Park is with the Autonomous Machine Laboratory, AI Center, Samsung
Research, Samsung Electronics Company, Seoul 06765, South Korea (e-mail:
pyosub.park@samsung.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TWC.2018.2832646
1536-1276 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
FBMC (FBMC-OQAM) system, which transmits real and
imaginary samples with a shift of half a symbol duration.
OQAM transmission satisfies orthogonality conditions in
the real field, since the intrinsic interference terms are
imaginary-valued [2]. However, these imaginary-valued
intrinsic interferences represent a major obstacle, preventing
the FBMC-OQAM system from using conventional multiple-
input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques.
Zakaria et al. [3], Zakaria and Ruyet [4], and
Renfors et al. [5] have proposed a number of approaches
to enable FBMC systems to use MIMO techniques.
Zakaria et al. [3] proposed an interference cancellation
method which is a combination of the minimum mean square
error (MMSE) and maximum likelihood (ML) techniques.
Zakaria et al. [3] again proposed a new interference-free
FBMC system, called FFT-FBMC. Renfors et al. [5] proposed
a block-wise Alamouti scheme to obtain transmit antenna
diversity. However, the bit error rate (BER) performance
of conventional interference cancellation method in [3] is
degraded due to the residual interferences. In addition,
spectral efficiency (SE) of the FFT-FBMC and block-wise
Alamouti schemes in [4] and [5] is decreased due to the
use of guard intervals. In summary, these approaches result
in performance degradation in terms of BER and SE, even
though they enable the application of the MIMO scheme.
Recently, quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM)-based
FBMC (FBMC-QAM) systems were proposed in [6], [7],
and [8], which support QAM symbol transmission and enable
MIMO transmission. These systems utilize two different filters
for the even- and odd-numbered subcarriers, respectively,
in order to avoid intrinsic interferences caused by imaginary
terms. However, due to the poor spectrum confinement of
the filters, these methods show degraded OOBE performance
compared to the FBMC-OQAM system. Since an essential
advantage of FBMC systems is excellent OOBE performance
compared with other multicarrier systems, the result is the
loss of one of the inherent strengths of the FBMC system.
Furthermore, the FBMC-QAM systems employ artificially
designed filters, where the filters are not perfectly orthogonal
to other filters. Therefore, they show inferior BER perfor-
mance compared to FBMC-OQAM systems, especially in
cases where high order modulation is supported.
Therefore, in this paper, we propose a new interference-free
FBMC system, called linearly processed FBMC (LP-FBMC)
system, which retains the typical advantages of the FBMC
system. The key contributions of this paper are as follows:
KIM et al.: NEW FILTER-BANK MULTICARRIER SYSTEM: LINEARLY PROCESSED FBMC SYSTEM 4889

TABLE I
D EFINITION OF M AIN PARAMETERS

i) we represent the FBMC transceiver in a matrix form,

which steers us toward a breakthrough in handling intrinsic
interference, ii) we propose a novel FBMC system by
using a singular value decomposition (SVD)-based linear
transformation that transforms the overlapped FBMC data
into the interference-free domain, and iii) the proposed system
eventually makes it possible to exploit MIMO techniques
without residual intrinsic interference.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: In Section II,
the FBMC system being addressed is introduced. Section III
presents the proposed LP-FBMC system. The performance
evaluations are presented in Section IV, and the conclusion of Fig. 1. Comparison of the FBMC-OQAM and the horizontal FBMC systems
in the frequency domain.
the paper is provided in Section V. To enhance the readability,
definition of parameters is organized in TABLE I.
Notation: a∗ denotes complex conjugate of scalar a, where Im,n is the intrinsic interference at the m-th subcarrier
[A]ij denotes an entry of matrix A in the i-th row and the of the n-th symbol from the other overlapped symbols, given
j-th column, AT denotes a transpose matrix whose entry in by
the i-th row and j-th column is [A]ji , AH denotes a complex
M−1
 N
 −1 ∞

conjugate matrix whose entry in the i-th row and j-th column
∗
is [A]ji . Im,n = xm ,n g[i−n M/2]g ∗[i − nM/2].
m =0 n =0 i=−∞
II. T HE FBMC-QAM S YSTEM [9] m =m n =
 n
The transmitted signal of the discrete time FBMC system (4)
was expressed in [9] as
In this paper, we consider the horizontal FBMC-QAM
M−1
 N−1
2π system described in [9] with a transceiver architecture that
s [i] = xm,n g [i − nM/2] ej M mi
, (1)
is the same as for the FBMC-OQAM system, but then insert
m=0 n=0
null data on odd-numbered subcarriers, given by
where i is the time sample index, M is the number of
subcarriers, N is the number of transmitted FBMC symbols, xm,n = 0, m ∈ {1, 3, · · · , M − 1} . (5)
g [i] is prototype filter with KM length, K is the overlapping
factor of the prototype filter g [i], and xm,n is the data at the If m ∈ {0, 2, · · · , M − 2}, which are the even-numbered
m-th subcarrier of the n-th symbol. When we consider an subcarriers, the data xm,n are QAM data so as to maintain the
ideal channel without noise, the received data for the m-th same data rate. Since null data has been inserted on the odd-
subcarrier at the n-th symbol is given in [9] as numbered subcarriers, there is no interference coming from the
∞ M−1
odd-numbered subcarriers. Furthermore, since the filters g [i]
  N−1
used in FBMC systems are well-localized prototype filters in
ym,n = xm ,n g [i − n M/2] g ∗ [i − nM/2],
i=−∞ m =0 n =0
the frequency domain [2], the QAM data in the even-numbered
(2) subcarriers do not interfere with the other even-numbered
∗
subcarriers, shown in Fig. 1, which is expressed by
where {·} denotes a complex conjugation. Furthermore,
∞

the received signal can be rewritten in a simpler manner,
g [i − n M/2] g ∗ [i − nM/2] = 0, if |m − m| = 2l,
represented by
i=−∞
ym,n = xm,n + Im,n , (3) (6)
4890 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO. 7, JULY 2018

Fig. 2. Horizontal FBMC-QAM system [9].

Fig. 3. Poly-phase network structure [1].

where l is a natural number. Therefore, the intrinsic interfer-

ence Im,n can be rewritten as only xeven
m,n from now on. In addition, we can also obtain the
vector form of the xIF
l,n
FT
for l ∈ {0, 1, · · · , M/2 − 1} as
N
 −1 ∞

Im,n = xm,n g [i − n M/2] g ∗ [i − nM/2], (7) xIFl
FT
= Xeven wl , (9)
n =0

i=−∞  T
n =n FT Δ
where xIF l = xIF l,0
FT
, . . . , xIF FT
l,N −1 is a vector form of
where there is no effect from the other subcarriers (m = m). the IFFT output data, X even
is a matrix form of the input data
Therefore, the intrinsic interferences have an effect on the whose entry in the i-th row and j-th column is xeven j,i , and wl
horizontal FBMC system only in the time domain, not in the is the l-th column of the M/2-point IDFT  matrix W whose
2πij
frequency domain. 2 j M/2
entry in the i-th row and j-th column is M e .
In (7), contrary to the FBMC-OQAM system, the inter- IF F T
The data xl,n is then inserted into the poly-phase network
carrier interferences (ICIs) from the adjacent subcarriers are
(PPN) which is presented in [2] as depicted in Fig. 3 for over-
eliminated by employing the horizontal FBMC-QAM system.
lapping and filtering. After the PPN processing, the transmitted
However, as with the FBMC-OQAM system, inter-symbol
data xP PN
l,n can be obtained by
interferences (ISIs) are still present due to the symbol overlap-
ping. In addition, while the ISIs of the FBMC-OQAM system 2K−1

are imaginary-valued, the ISIs of the horizontal FBMC-QAM xP PN
l,n = g [kM/2 + l] xIF FT
l,n−k , (10)
system are complex-valued, since the complex-valued data k=0
xm,n is being used. In order to overcome this complex-valued where K is the overlapping factor of the prototype filter g [i].
ISI, we will propose a new approach which transforms the The transmitted data can also be formulated in a vector form
data into the interference-free domain. as follows:

III. P ROPOSED L INEARLY P ROCESSED FBMC S YSTEM xPl

PN
= Gl xIF l
FT
= Gl Xeven wl , (11)
 T
In this section, we propose a transceiver for the linearly
where xP l
PN
= xP PN
l,0 , · · · , xP PN
l,N −1 is the vector form of
processed FBMC (LP-FBMC) system that transforms the PPN
received data into ISI-free data by using an SVD-based linear the transmitted data xl,n for n ∈ {0, 1, · · · , N − 1}. In (11),
process. We represent the FBMC-QAM system explained in Gl is a PPN matrix whose entry in the i-th row and j-th
Section II in a matrix form. The SVD-based linear transfor- column can be expressed by

mation is then applied to this system to eliminate the intrinsic
g [(i − j) M/2 + l] , for 0 ≤ i − j < 2K
interferences caused by the overlapped symbols. Furthermore, [Gl ]ij = (12)
we describe a power allocation strategy across symbols which 0, otherwise
maximizes the capacity of the LP-FBMC system. where [A]ij denotes an entry of matrix A in the i-th row and
the j-th column.
A. Linear Formulation of the Intrinsic Interference At the FBMC receiver, we employ the receiver using
PPN structure presented in [2]. The received data which is
We formulate the input and output data of each block
processed by PPN for downsampling and matched-filtering can
in Fig. 2 as a vector form. As addressed in (5), since input
be expressed as
data xm,n is null data for odd m, we will consider only the
data xm,n of the even-numbered subcarriers from this point on. 2K−1

PPN
The output of the M/2-point IFFT of xm,n for even-numbered yl,n = g ∗ [kM/2 + m] xP PN
l,n+k , (13)
subcarriers can be obtained by k=0

 M/2−1 when an ideal channel without noise is considered. Further-

2  even j 2πml
xIF
l,n
FT
= x e M/2 , (8) more, its vector form can be obtained by
M m=0 m,n
ylP P N = GH PPN
l xl = GH l Gl X
even
wl , (14)
Δ
where xeven
m,n =x2m,n for m ∈ {0, 1, · · · , M/2 − 1}. Since  T
the data actually used is data of the even-numbered sub- where ylP P N = yl,0PPN PPN
, · · · , yl,N −1 is a vector form of
carriers xeven
m,n , the formula expansion is performed using the output data from the PPN at the receiver part, and AH is
KIM et al.: NEW FILTER-BANK MULTICARRIER SYSTEM: LINEARLY PROCESSED FBMC SYSTEM 4891

denoted as a complex conjugate matrix whose entry in the i-th

∗
row and j-th column is [A]ji .
Lastly, the output data of the M/2-point FFT can be
obtained as
 M/2−1
even 2  P P N −j 2πml
ym,n = yl,n e M/2 . (15)
M
l=0
even
The vector form of the output data ym,n can be obtained as
 M/2−1
even 2  P P N −j 2πml
ym = yl e M/2
M
l=0
 M/2−1 Fig. 4. Comparison of the MIMO channel model and the FBMC transceiver
2  2πml
wl e−j M/2 . (16)
model.
= GH l Gl X
even
M
l=0
Since the odd-numbered subcarriers are not used, there is for the MIMO channel model, can be used in the FBMC
no interference caused by the other subcarriers, i.e., no ICI. system. Among the various MIMO techniques, we will
even apply the concepts of spatial multiplexing techniques in the
Therefore, the output vector ym can be represented by
proposed LP-FBMC system in this paper in order to eliminate
M/2−1
2  j 2πml 2πml
M/2 e−j M/2
the effect of intrinsic interference.
even
ym = Gl H Gl xeven
m e
M
⎛ l=0 ⎞ B. Linear Transformation Into the Interference-Free Domain
M/2−1
2  Based on the linear formulation in (17) and the similarity
=⎝ GHl Gl
⎠ xeven
m
M of the FBMC transceiver model with the MIMO channel
l=0
model, we will apply an SVD-based multiplexing technique.
= Fxeven
m , (17) By applying the multiplexing technique, overlapped FBMC
even
 even even
T data with intrinsic interference can be converted into parallel
where ym = ym,0 , · · · , ym,N −1 is a vector form
of the output data at the even-numbered subcarriers and independent interference-free data.
M/2−1
 Let us apply an SVD to the FBMC transceiver matrix (17).
Δ 2
F= M GHl Gl is an FBMC transceiver matrix. Note The SVD result of the FBMC transceiver matrix is expressed
l=0
that the FBMC transceiver matrix F is composed of the as
arithmetic operations of the prototype filter g [i]. Therefore, F = UΛVH , (19)
this matrix depends only on the prototype filter and does not
where U and V are N ×N unitary matrices whose columns are
change unless the system changes the prototype filter.
left and right singular vectors of F, respectively, and Λ is an
When a time-invariant channel and complex Gaussian noise
N ×N non-negative and diagonal matrix whose main diagonal
(zm,n ∼ CN (0, N0 )) are considered, the equation (17) can be N
entries are the ordered singular values of F, {λn }n=1 . Note
rewritten as
 M/2−1 that the matrix F is a Hermitian matrix which is the same
even even 2  −j 2πml as its complex conjugate matrix. Therefore, V and U are the
ym = hm Fxm + GH l zl e
M/2
same. Also, all the singular values λn are real values.
M
l=0
Fig. 5 shows the block diagram of the proposed linear
= hm xeven + hm (F − I) xeven +z̃m , (18)
 m    m  processing. To convert the FBMC data into parallel inde-
Desired Data Inter-symbol Interferences pendent interference-free data, we exploit V and UH for
where hm is a small-scale channel coefficient of the 2m-th pre-processing and post-processing, respectively. In the pre-
T
subcarrier, zl = [zl,0 , · · · , zl,N −1 ] is a vector form of the processing, the N × 1 input data vector xeven m , which is
complex Gaussian noise, z̃m = [z̃m,0 , · · · , z̃m,N −1 ]T is a the m/2-th column of the N × M/2 data matrix Xeven ,
vector form of the noise processed by receiver using PPN, is multiplied by the pre-processing matrix V, expressed by
and I is an identity matrix. From (18), the second term on xpre even
m = Vxm , m ∈ {0, 1, · · · , M/2 − 1} , (20)
the right-hand side stands for the inter-symbol interference,  T
Δ pre pre
which comes from the other symbols of the even-numbered where xpre
m = xm,0 , . . . , xm,N −1 represents pre-processed
subcarriers. data. The pre-processed data is then converted by parallel-to-
As shown in Fig. 4, there is an analogy between the serial conversion which converts the N × 1 column vector into
transceiver model of the FBMC system in (17) and the the 1 × N row vector. The M/2 row vectors are stacked by
MIMO channel model [10]. By regarding the symbol indices M/2 × N matrix from top to bottom. Then, the n-th column
of the FBMC transceiver model as antenna indices of the vector of the stacked matrix is a data vector which is inserted
MIMO channel model, we can treat the FBMC transceiver into the FBMC transceiver, and can be expressed as
matrix F as the MIMO channel coefficient matrix H.  T
pre pre pre
Therefore, various techniques, such as a precoding method tn = x0,n x1,n · · · xM/2−1,n , (21)
4892 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO. 7, JULY 2018

Fig. 5. Block diagram of the proposed LP-FBMC system.

where tn is a M/2 × 1 column vector which is composed overlapped data is converted into parallel independent data.
of input data from the even-numbered subcarriers at the n-th Therefore, the proposed system enables QAM data to be
symbol. employed without any effect from residual intrinsic interfer-
As shown in Fig. 5, the vector tn is then inserted into the ences being caused by the data at the other subcarriers or at
FBMC transceiver which is formulated as F. After the data the other symbols.
vector tn passes the FBMC transceiver F, the received data
can be obtained as
 T C. Effective SNR and Power Allocation Strategy
even even even
rn = y0,n y1,n · · · yM/2−1,n , (22) As shown in (24), the transmitted signal power, effective
even
signal power, and effective noise power are not the same
where ym,n is the output data of the FBMC transceiver as other systems due to the pre-/post-processing. Therefore,
at the m-th subcarrier of the n-th symbol. The N column in this subsection, we will show the effective signal-to-noise
even
vectors composed of ym,n are also stacked from left to right ratio (SNR) of the LP-FBMC system. Furthermore, from the
as shown in Fig. 5. The m-th 1 × N row vector of the effective SNR, we will describe a power allocation strategy
stacked matrix is converted to an N × 1 column
 even T vector, which which maximizes the capacity of the LP-FBMC system.
even Δ even
is defined as ym = ym,0 , . . . , ym,N −1 , by serial-to- Let us calculate the effective SNR which is a ratio of the
even
parallel conversion. Then, the N × 1 column vector ym is effective signal power and effective noise power. The post-
H
multiplied by the post-processing matrix U , expressed as processed noise can be obtained by
ypost = UH ym even
m ∈ {0, 1, · · · , M/2 − 1} , (23)  M/2−1
2 
m
H −j 2πml
 T U z̃m = UH GHl zl e
M/2 , (25)
where ym post Δ
= ym,0post post
, . . . , ym,N is the post-processed M
−1 l=0
data vector.
where the sum of the complex Gaussian noise is multiplied
After the pre-processing V and post-processing UH based
by the PPN matrix at the receiver GH l and post-processing
on the SVD of the FBMC transceiver model in (19),
matrix UH . Therefore, the power of the post-processed noise
the received data vector in (17) can be equivalently converted
can be calculated as
into
M/2−1
post
ym = UH ym
even  H
2  
E U z̃m z̃H
mU = E UH GH H H
l zl wl wl zl Gl U
M
= UH (hm · Fxpre + z̃m ) l=0
 m H M/2−1
= hm · U UΛV (Vxeven
H H
m ) + U z̃m 2N0   H H 
= U Gl Gl U
= hm · Λxeven
m
H
+ U z̃m . (24) M
l=0
⎛ ⎞
M/2−1
Since the matrix Λ is a diagonal matrix, we can say that 2N0 H ⎝  ⎠U
the FBMC transceiver matrix F is diagonalized by the pre-/ = U GH
l Gl
M
post-processing. Comparing (18) and (24), we can see that l=0

the data ym which had intrinsic interference caused by the = N0 UH FU = N0 Λ, (26)

KIM et al.: NEW FILTER-BANK MULTICARRIER SYSTEM: LINEARLY PROCESSED FBMC SYSTEM 4893

since the unitary matrices U and V are the same. The equa-
tion (26) stands for that the post-processed noise is N0 Λ (i.e.,
CN (0, N0 λn ) for post-processed noise of the n-th symbol).
Therefore, from (24) and (26), we can formulate the equivalent
representation of the post-processed data ym,n as

post
ym,n = hm λn xeven
m,n + λn zm,n , (27)
where λn is the n-th diagonal element of the coefficient
matrix Λ. Fig. 6. Equivalent interference-free parallel model of the proposed LP-FBMC
system.
The effective SNR of the proposed LP-FBMC system at the
n-th symbol of the m-th subcarrier can be obtained as
TABLE II
2
|hm | p2n λn S IMULATION PARAMETERS
SNRn = , (28)
N0
where p2n is the allocated power for the n-th symbol.
From the (28), we can calculate the capacity of the
LP-FBMC as
N −1
 
1 
2
|hm | p2n λn
C= log2 1 + , (29)
N n=0 N0
which is an average of the capacity at the n-th symbol, In summary, the proposed LP-FBMC system exploits a
since the SNRs for the different symbols are different from half of the available spectrum in order to avoid ICI which
each other. Furthermore, since the transmitted power must be results in a half of the total data rate compared to OFDM
normalized to 1, there is a constraint given by and FBMC-OQAM systems. To compensate the reduced data
N −1
rate, transmission rate in time domain is doubled, which
1  2 is faster than Nyquist rate. Without additional processing,
p λn = 1, (30)
N n=0 n the ISI causes severe BER performance degradation due
to the symbol overlapping in time domain. However, since
which is proved in Appendix. By the theorem of inequality of
the proposed LP-FBMC system employs SVD-based linear
arithmetic and geometric means, all capacities of the different
pre- and post-processing, the ISI is removed. As a result,
symbols need to be the same. Therefore, in order to maximize
the proposed LP-FBMC can transform the overlapped FBMC
the capacity, the allocated power at the n-th symbol must be
data into interference-free domain from the SVD-based linear
obtained by
processing.
1
p2n = . (31)
λn IV. P ERFORMANCE E VALUATIONS
By applying the power allocation to the input data, the equiv- In this section, we compare the performance of the proposed
alent representation of the proposed LP-FBMC system at the LP-FBMC system with that of the CP-OFDM and FBMC-
n-th symbol of the m-th subcarrier in (27) can be rewritten as QAM systems in [6] in terms of OOBE performance, BER per-
 formance under time-varying channel, and BER performance
post
ym,n = hm λn pn xeven
m,n + λn zm,n ,
  in an asynchronous multi-user uplink environment. Further-
even
= hm λn xm,n + λn zm,n , (32) more, this section contains the computational complexities of
the multi-carrier systems.
when power of the input data xeven
m,n is normalized as 1. As a In the conventional FBMC-OQAM and proposed LP-FBMC
result, by allocating power as (30), the SNR of the proposed
systems, a PHYDYAS prototype filter with K = 4 is used [1].
LP-FBMC system at the n-th symbol of the m-th subcarrier
We considered an AWGN channel model, the Extended
becomes
Pedestrian-A (EPA) 5 Hz and Extended Vehicular-A 70 Hz
2 2 2
|hm | p2n λn |hm | λn |hm | channel models certified by the 3rd Generation Partnership
SNRn = = = , (33)
N0 N0 λn N0 Project (3GPP) LTE standard in [11]. In the case of the
and the total transmission power becomes 1, which is the same 3GPP EPA and EVA channel models, a time-variant channel
as with other interference-free systems. during transmission with 5 Hz and 70 Hz maximum Doppler
Fig. 6 shows the equivalent parallelized model of frequency is assumed. Perfect channel estimation with MMSE
the proposed LP-FBMC system, where the vector channel equalization is also assumed. The simulation parame-
A Δ
 A
ters are summarized in Table II.
xPm = xP PA
m,0 , · · · , xm,N −1 is a input vector applying
power allocation, and matrix P is a power allocation matrix
whose n-th diagonal entry is pn . By using pre-/post-processing A. Out-of-Band Emission Performances
and power allocation, the LP-FBMC system can employ One of the fundamental advantages of the FBMC system is
QAM data without interference and noise enhancement. excellent OOBE performance compared to the other multicar-
4894
Fig. 7. PSD comparison to calculate the number of usable subcarriers.
Fig. 8. BER performances of the CP-OFDM, FBMC-OQAM, conventional
FBMC-QAM [8] and LP-FBMC systems when QPSK data are used in an
AWGN channel.
rier systems. In order to compare the OOBE performances,
the power spectral densities (PSDs) of the CP-OFDM,
FBMC-OQAM, FBMC-QAM and LP-FBMC systems are
simulated with 1024 active subcarriers out of 2048 total
subcarriers in Fig. 7. As shown in Fig. 7, OOBE performance
of the proposed LP-FBMC is almost the same with that of
FBMC-OQAM. Since the proposed system employs pre-
processing before the transmitter filtering and post-processing
after the receiver filtering, there is no change in the prototype
filter shape and its well-localized characteristic. On the other
hands, the conventional FBMC-QAM system modifies the
filter shape opposed to the proposed LP-FBMC system. The
modified filter is not well-localized in frequency domain
compared to the prototype filter of the FBMC-OQAM system.
As a result, the OOBE performance of the conventional
FBMC-QAM system is better than CP-OFDM system but is
far worse than the other FBMC systems.
B. Bit Error Rate Performances
Let us compare BER performances of the proposed
LP-FBMC with other multicarrier systems. We have assumed
that the total number of symbols is 14 which is the num-
ber of symbols per subframe. Fig. 8 demonstrates the BER
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO. 7, JULY 2018
Fig. 9. BER performances of the conventional FBMC-QAM [8] and
LP-FBMC systems in the time-varying channel model.
performances of the CP-OFDM, conventional FBMC-QAM,
and proposed LP-FBMC systems when quadrature phase shift
keying (QPSK) data is used under AWGN channel. The
proposed LP-FBMC system shows the same BER performance
as FBMC-OQAM and conventional FBMC-QAM, and is
better than the CP-OFDM. By using the pre-/post-processing,
the interferences from the other symbols are completely
removed in the proposed LP-FBMC system. Furthermore, due
to the power allocation, the effective SNR of the LP-FBMC
system is the same with the SNR of the other systems. There-
fore, in the AWGN channel, the proposed LP-FBMC system
can achieve the same BER performance as the other FBMC
systems and superior BER performance to CP-OFDM system.
Fig. 9 shows the BER performances of the conventional
FBMC-QAM and proposed LP-FBMC systems in the 3GPP
EPA 5 Hz and EVA 70 Hz channel models, respectively,
when MMSE-based frequency domain equalization is per-
formed. For the high order modulation, the BER performances
KIM et al.: NEW FILTER-BANK MULTICARRIER SYSTEM: LINEARLY PROCESSED FBMC SYSTEM 4895

Fig. 10. 2×1 MISO BER performances of the conventional FBMC-QAM [8]
and LP-FBMC systems in the 3GPP EPA 5 Hz channel model.

of the LP-FBMC system are superior to the conventional

FBMC-QAM system. The reason for this is that the pre-/
post-processing does not change the filter configuration, while
the conventional FBMC-QAM changes the prototype filter
of the FBMC-OQAM system. Specifically, the conventional
FBMC-QAM system utilizes an artificially designed filter to
lower the OOBE. This artificially designed filter does not
perfectly achieve the orthogonality condition presented in (6).
Consequently, the use of this artificially designed filter renders
the FBMC-QAM system vulnerable to the time-varying chan-
nel, resulting in inferior BER performance with time-varying
channels.
We compare the BER performance with a multiple-input
single-output (MISO) channel in order to verify that the
proposed LP-FBMC is able to employ MIMO configuration,
especially transmit antenna diversity. Fig. 10 exhibits the BER
performances of the conventional FBMC-QAM and proposed
LP-FBMC systems in a 2 × 1 multiple-input single-output
EPA 5 Hz channel model when the spatial frequency block Fig. 11. BER performances of the proposed LP-FBMC, the conventional
FBMC-QAM [8], FBMC-OQAM, and CP-OFDM systems when 64 QAM
code (SFBC) is applied. The BER performance with a MISO data are used in time-varying environments.
channel demonstrates that transmit antenna diversity can be
achieved for the proposed LP-FBMC, which can be verified
by comparing the gradient of the MISO channel BER with
the gradient of single-input single-output (SISO) channel BER. Fig. 11 depicts that the BER performances of the proposed
Since the proposed LP-FBMC eliminates the intrinsic interfer- LP-FBMC, conventional FBMC-QAM, FBMC-OQAM, and
ences, it can employ QAM data, and can also employ MIMO CP-OFDM systems under the time varying channels when
configuration. 64 QAM is employed. From the results, BER performances
In the case of the conventional FBMC-QAM system, it also of the conventional FBMC-QAM systems are inferior to those
employs transmit antenna diversity, since its MISO channel of the other multicarrier systems. The reason for the infe-
BER gradient is twice the gradient of SISO channel BER. rior BER performance is that the conventional FBMC-QAM
However, the BER becomes degraded for high order mod- employs artificially designed filters which do not achieve
ulation, due to its artificially designed filter. In particular, perfect orthogonality condition. As a result, the artificially
it is difficult to employ transmit antenna diversity with the designed filters render the conventional FBMC-QAM system
conventional FBMC-QAM system when 64 QAM modulation vulnerable to time-varying channel.
is applied. As a result, the simulation validates the fact that the In the cases of the proposed LP-FBMC system, BER
proposed LP-FBMC system can employ MIMO configuration, performances are also slightly lower than those of the
and that its BER performance is superior to that of the conventional FBMC-OQAM and CP-OFDM systems for
conventional FBMC-QAM system. 20 dB or higher Eb /N0 . The reason for this is that the
4896
Fig. 12. Time and frequency alignment of two users in an asynchronous
uplink environment.
Fig. 13. BER performances of the CP-OFDM, FBMC-OQAM, conventional
FBMC-QAM [8] and LP-FBMC systems for asynchronous two-user uplink
environment.
ISI caused by time-varying channel affects a performance
of SVD-based linear pre-/post-processing for high Eb /N0 .
Compared to the results of conventional FBMC-QAM
system, however, the performance degradation caused by the
time-varying channel is extremely low.
C. Performance in Asynchronous Multi-user Environment
One of the key advantages of the FBMC system is its
robustness to the asynchronous multiuser uplink environment.
Let us compare the BER performance of the proposed
LP-FBMC system with that of conventional multicarrier
systems under this environment. As shown in Fig. 12,
we consider an asynchronous uplink environment with two
users. In the considered environment, we assume that both
users employ adjacent frequency bands without a guard band.
Furthermore, we assume that the signals of both users arrive
asynchronously with timing offset τ and that the timing
offset τ is a uniform random variable in the interval [0, T /2],
where T is the time duration of transmission symbol.
Fig. 13 shows the BER performances of the multicarrier
systems when the symbols of two users are received asyn-
chronously in the time domain. The proposed LP-FBMC
shows the best BER performance, as does the FBMC-OQAM.
The reason they obtain the best BER performance in the
asynchronous uplink environment is that their OOBE perfor-
mances are excellent compared to the CP-OFDM and conven-
tional FBMC-QAM. Due to the timing misalignment between
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 17, NO. 7, JULY 2018
TABLE III
C OMPUTATIONAL C OMPLEXITIES OF THE M ULTICARRIER S YSTEMS
the users, the signal of the desired user (user 1) appears non-
orthogonally to the signal of the interference user (user 2). This
non-orthogonality causes out-of-band leakage and degrades the
BER performance. The best OOBE performance results in the
lowest out-of-band leakage for the proposed LP-FBMC and
FBMC-OQAM. Therefore, since the proposed LP-FBMC has
the same OOBE as FBMC-OQAM, it can be utilized for the
asynchronous multiuser uplink scenario.
Conversely, the BER performances of the conventional
FBMC-QAM and CP-OFDM are inferior to the proposed
LP-FBMC and FBMC-OQAM. In particular, CP-OFDM
shows the worst BER performance in the asynchronous multi-
user uplink environment. The reason for this is that their
OOBE performances, as shown in Fig. 7, are relatively lower
than the those of the proposed LP-FBMC and FBMC-OQAM.
Contrary to the proposed LP-FBMC, they are relatively weak
to the asynchronous multiuser uplink environment.
D. Practical Implementations
This subsection presents the computational complexity
and system overhead of the proposed LP-FBMC system
compared with conventional CP-OFDM, FBMC-OQAM,
and FBMC-QAM systems. The computational complexity is
evaluated by computing the number of real multiplications of
the transmitter per QAM data transmission. The computational
complexities of the conventional CP-OFDM, FBMC-OQAM,
and FBMC-QAM systems are summarized in III from [8],
[12], and [13].
The proposed LP-FBMC system possesses an on-line com-
putational complexity due to the additional matrix multiplica-
tion from the linear processing for each subcarrier. Since the
M/2 QAM data are transmitted for each symbol, 2M N 2 num-
bers of multiplications are needed in the linear processing to
transmit M N/2 QAM data. In addition, instead of multiplying
the power allocation matrix P and the pre-processing matrix V
separately, we can obtain the pre-processed data vector xpre
n
by multiplying the matrix VP. Therefore, since the power
allocation and pre-processing can be performed concurrently,
the total computational complexity from the power allocation
and pre-processing is 4N . Therefore, the total computational
complexity of the proposed FBMC-QAM for each piece fo
QAM data is given by
   
M
cprop = log 2 − 3 + 8/M + 
4K +  4N .
LP-FBMC
2
   PPN Pre-processing
IFFT
(34)
KIM et al.: NEW FILTER-BANK MULTICARRIER SYSTEM: LINEARLY PROCESSED FBMC SYSTEM 4897

Contrary to the other multicarrier systems, the complexity of and BER performance is the same with the FBMC-QAM
the LP-FBMC system increases when the number of symbols system. Thanks to this superior OOBE performance, the BER
increases. The reason for this is that size of the linear process- performance of the proposed LP-FBMC system outperforms
ing matrices V and UH increase as the number of symbols the CP-OFDM and conventional FBMC-QAM systems under
increases. high order modulation and asynchronous uplink multiuser
The LP-FBMC system requires off-line system overhead environments. Possible topics for the future include extending
in order to calculate the pre-processing matrix V and our work to cover reducing the computational complexity of
post-processing matrix UH from SVD operation. In addition, the LP-FBMC system.
power allocation must be performed for each symbol.
However, the kind of system overhead is not the same as A PPENDIX
on-line or real-time system overhead, since the pre-/post- P ROOF OF THE C APACITY C ONSTRAINT
processing and power allocation do not depend on the input
data but depend only on the prototype filter. Therefore, From (11), the average power of the transmission signal
the LP-FBMC system requires off-line system overhead only sm,n can be calculated by
once, when the LP-FBMC system is initially set. 2    H 
In addition to the computational complexity, there is E tr XP P N XP P N
MN
additional system latency from the post-processing. Post- M/2−1   
2   P P N H 
processing should be performed after all the symbols are = E tr xP m
PN
xm
received. The reason is that such linear processing is burst M N m=0
level processing, while the CP-OFDM and FBMC-OQAM M/2−1
2 
systems are symbol level processing. Receiver need to wait = {E[tr(Gm VXeven wm
for all the symbols in order to decode data, even if the data M N m=0
is involved in the first symbol. Therefore, the system latency 
H H
· wm (Xeven ) VH GH
m
should be twice the total symbol length than CP-OFDM and
M/2−1    
FBMC-OQAM systems. In the actual communication system, 2  H
however, there is an interleaving technique which also needs = E tr (Xeven ) VH GH
m Gm VX
even
M N m=0
to wait for all the symbols in the receiver. Such interleaving
1   even H  N −1
technique is also performed after all symbols are received. 1  2
Therefore, since the post-processing can be simultaneously = E tr (X ) ΛXeven = p λn . (35)
N N n=0 n
applied with an interleaving technique, system latency from
the burst level processing is reasonable. Therefore, since the average power of the transmission signal
Contrary to the computational complexity and system sm,n must be normalized to 1, the constraint of the capac-
latency, peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the proposed ity (30) is satisfied.
LP-FBMC does not increase. The proposed LP-FBMC
exploits QAM data which doubles the power compared to
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Jintae Kim (S’15) received the B.S. degree in
electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei
University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2015, where he
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical
and electronic engineering. His research interests are
5G and 6G wireless communications. In addition,
his current research interests include the machine
learning-based communication systems and design
of new waveform such as the QAM-based FBMC
and GFDM.
Yosub Park (S’11–M’18) received the B.S. and
Ph.D. degrees in electrical and electronic engineer-
ing from Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea,
in 2011 and 2018, respectively. Since 2018, he
has been a Senior Engineer with the Autonomous
Machine Laboratory, AI Center, Samsung Research,
Samsung Electronics Company, Seoul. His research
interests are in 5G/6G wireless communications
such as ultra-dense networks and cellular-based V2X
communications. In addition, his current research
interests include the simulator design and develop-
ment for autonomous driving systems and new waveform design issues such
FBMC, GFDM, and F-OFDM.
Sungwoo Weon (S’12) received the B.S. degree
in electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei
University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2012, where he
is currently pursuing the joint M.S./Ph.D. degree
in electrical and electronic engineering. His current
research interests include 5G wireless communi-
cations. In addition, his current research interests
include the performance improvement of filter bank
multicarrier systems and design of new waveform
for future Internet of Things services.
Jinkyo Jeong (S’15) received the B.S. degree in
electrical and electronic engineering from Yonsei
University, Seoul, South Korea, in 2015, where he
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical
and electronic engineering. His research interests
are in 5G and beyond 5G wireless communications.
In addition, his current research interests are in new
waveform design, full-duplex systems, and machine
learning.
Sooyong Choi (S’98–M’04) was born in Seoul,
South Korea, in 1971. He received the B.S.E.E.,
M.S.E.E., and Ph.D. degrees from Yonsei Univer-
sity, Seoul, in 1995, 1997, and 2001, respectively.
In 2001, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with
the IT Research Group, Yonsei University. His work
focused on proposing and planning for the fourth-
generation communication systems. From 2002 to
2004, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Uni-
versity of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA,
USA. From 2004 to 2005, he was a Researcher with
Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, USA. From 2005 to 2016, he
was an Assistant Professor and an Associate Professor with the School of
Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Yonsei University. Since 2016, he has
been a Professor with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His
research interests include adaptive signal processing techniques (equalization
and detection), massive MIMO systems for wireless communication, and
new waveforms and multicarrier transmission techniques for future wireless
communication systems.
Daesik Hong (S’86–M’90–SM’05) received the
B.S. and M.S. degrees in electronics engineer-
ing from Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea,
in 1983 and 1985, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree from the School of Electronics Engineering,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA,
in 1990. He joined Yonsei University in 1991, where
he is currently the Dean of the College of Engineer-
ing and a Professor with the School of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering. He has been serving as
the Chair of the Samsung-Yonsei Research Center
for Mobile Intelligent Terminals. He also served as a Vice President for
Research Affairs, a President for the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foun-
dation, Yonsei University, from 2010 to 2011, and a Chief Executive Officer
for Yonsei Technology Holding Company in 2011. He also served as a
President for the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers (IEIE)
from 2016 to 2017. He was appointed as the Underwood/Avison Distinguished
Professor with Yonsei University in 2010. His current research activities are
focused on future wireless communication, including 5G systems, vehicle-to-
everything communication systems, new waveform, non-orthogonal multiple
access, full-duplex, and AI-based communications.
He received the Best Teacher Award from Yonsei University in 2006, 2010,
and 2012, respectively, the HaeDong Outstanding Research Awards of the
Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences in 2006, and
IEIE in 2009. He served as an Editor for the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON
W IRELESS C OMMUNICATIONS from 2006 to 2011 and the IEEE W IRELESS
C OMMUNICATIONS L ETTERS from 2011 to 2016. More information about
his research is available at http://mirinae.yonsei.ac.kr.