INTERCARRIER INTERFERENCE (ICI) IN ORTHOGONAL FREQUENCY DIVISION MULTIPLEXING SYSTEMS

Sandeep kaur1 and Harjinder Singh2

Student, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering UCoE Patiala-147002, Punjab, India 2 Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering UCoE Patiala-147002, Punjab, India Corresponding author e-mail:-1sandeepbhullar647@[Link] 2 hrjinder@[Link] Abstract Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising candidate for achieving high data rates in broadband wireless mobile communication systems. The sensitivity of OFDM systems to frequency offset compared with single carrier systems is a major disadvantage. In general, Frequency offset is defined as the difference between the nominal frequency and actual output frequency. In OFDM, the uncertainty in carrier frequency, which is due to a Doppler shift in the channel or due to a difference in the frequencies of the local oscillators in the transmitter and receiver, gives rise to a shift in the frequency domain. This shift is also referred to as frequency offset. The frequency offset destroyed the orthogonality of the sub-carriers that result in intercarrier interference (ICI) in the OFDM symbol. This ICI causes power leakage among subcarrier thus, degrades the performance of the OFDM system. is more complex especially because of the mobility of the mobile user; thus more exact symbol timing and frequency-offset control must be used to ensure that sub-carriers remain orthogonal. However, the difference between the frequency of the oscillator in the transmitter and the receiver causes frequency offset which if not estimated and compensated for could ruin the orthogonality of the subcarriers thereby causing large bit errors in the received signal. Also the distortion of the signals while traveling through the channel and the movement of the mobility user causes synchronization problems. The basic principle of OFDM is to split a high rate data-stream into multiple lower rate data streams that are transmitted simultaneously over a number of sub carriers. The separation of the subcarriers is theoretically minimal such that there is a very compact spectral utilization. These subcarriers have different frequencies and they are orthogonal to each other [2]. Since the bandwidth is narrower, each sub channel requires a longer symbol period. Due to the increased symbol duration, the ISI over each channel is reduced [3] One of the principal advantages of OFDM is its utility for transmission at very nearly optimum performance in unequalized channels and in multipath channels. To account for Inter-Block Interference (IBI), OFDM systems rely on the so called cyclic prefix (CP) insert at the transmitter, after IFFT modulation. To eliminate IBI, the length of CP is chosen larger than the FIR channel memory. But one of the principal disadvantages of OFDM is more sensitivity to carrier frequency offset (CFO) than single carrier modulations. There are two destructive effects caused by CFO in OFDM systems. One is the power loss due to reduction in signal amplitude and the second is the presence of
1

Keywords: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Intercarrier Interference (ICI), Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) I. INTRODUCTION Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), with high capacity transmission and multicarrier modulation technique has been applied into many digital transmission systems, such as digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system, digital video broadcasting TV (DVB-T) system, asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), IEEE 802.11a/g Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), IEEE 802.16 Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) systems, and ultra-wideband (UWB) system [1]. Its application in mobile communication

intercarrier interference (ICI) from the other carriers. The resulting ICI degrades the system performance. In (Armstrong: 1999), ICI self-cancellation of the data-conversion method was proposed to cancel the ICI caused by frequency offset in the OFDM system. In (Y. Fu, S.G. Kang, and C.C. KO, 2002), ICI selfcancellation of the data-conjugate method was proposed to minimize the ICI caused by frequency offset and it could reduce the peak average to power ratio (PAPR) than the data-conversion method. In (Zhao and S. Hggman, 2001), self ICI cancellation method which maps the data to be transmitted onto adjacent pairs of subcarriers has been described. But this method is less bandwidth efficient. In (van de Beek, Sandell, and Borjesson, 1997), the joint Maximum Likelihood symbol-time and CFO estimator in OFDM systems has been developed. And the CFO only is estimated and is cancelled at the receiver. In addition, statistical approaches have also been explored to estimate and cancel ICI (Tiejun, Proakis, and Zeidler, 2005). The rest the paper is organized as follows: In section II, the standard OFDM system has been described. In section III, intercarrier interference has been described. In section IV, factors including ICI has been described. II. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION The block diagram of standard OFDM system is given in figure. In an OFDM system, the input bit stream is taken as binary data. Then this input data stream is converted into N parallel data streams each with symbol period Ts through the serial to parallel converter. When the parallel symbol streams are generated, each stream would be modulated and carrier over at different center frequencies. The subcarriers are spaced by 1/NTs in frequency, thus they are orthogonal over the interval (0, Ts). Then, the N Symbols are mapped through an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) so that each subcarrier is assigned with a specific frequency. The frequencies selected are orthogonal frequencies. In IFFT, the frequency domain OFDM symbols are converted into time domain OFDM symbols. Guard interval is introduced in each OFDM symbol to eliminate inter symbol interference (ISI). All the OFDM symbols are taken as input to parallel to serial data. These OFDM symbols constitute a frame. A number of frames can be regarded as one OFDM signal. This OFDM signal is allowed to pass through digital-to-analog converter (DAC).In OFDM signal is fed to RF power amplifier for transmission. Then the signal is allowed to pass through additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. Therefore, In OFDM systems, the transmitted signal in time domain could be expressed as.

( ) ( ) (1) Where the ( ) s are the base band symbols on each sub-carrier.

Figure 1: The basic block diagram of an OFDM system At the receiver, the signal is converted back to a discrete N point sequence ( ), corresponding to each subcarrier. This discrete signal is demodulated using an N-point Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) at receiver. The demodulated symbol stream is given by ( ) ( ) ( ) (2)

Where ( ) corresponds to the FFT of the samples of ( ). Which is the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) introduced in the channel. III. INTERCARRIER INTERFERENCE (ICI) The main disadvantage of OFDM, however, is its susceptibility to small difference in frequency at the transmitted and receiver, normally referred as frequency offset. This frequency offset can be caused by Doppler shift due to relative motion between the transmitter and receiver, or by differences between the frequencies of the local oscillators at the transmitter and receiver [6] [7].

Figure 2: Frequency offset model

The received signal is given by ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Where, is the normalized frequency offset, and is given by . is the frequency difference between the transmitted and received carrier frequencies and Ts is the subcarrier symbol period. ( ) is the AWGN introduced in the channel. The effect of this frequency offset on the received symbol stream can be understood by considering the received symbol ( ) on the kth sub-carrier. ( ) ( ) ( ) () ( (4) )

Where, N is the total number of subcarriers, X (k) is the transmitted symbol for the kth subcarrier, nk is the FFT of w(n), and S(l-k) are the complex coefficients for the ICI components in the received signal. The ICI components are the interfering signals transmitted on sub-carriers other than the kth subcarrier. The complex coefficients are given by, ( )
( ( ( ( )) ) ) ( ( )( )

A. Doppler Effect: The relative motion between receiver and transmitter, or mobile medium among them, would result in the Doppler Effect, a frequency shift in narrow-band communications. For example, the Doppler Effect would influence the quality of a cell phone conversation in a moving car. In general, the Doppler frequency shift can be formulated in a function of the relative velocity, the angle between the velocity direction and the communication link, and the carrier frequency The value of Doppler shift could be given as:2 ( ) (6) Where, is the angle between the velocity and the communication link, which is generally modeled as a uniform distribution between 0 and , v is the receiver velocity, and the is the carrier wavelength. Let us assume that electromagnetic wave velocity is C, the wavelength of carrier can be written as:(7)

Where

is the carrier frequency.

(5) IV. FACTORS INCULDING ICI A major problem in OFDM is its vulnerability to frequency offset errors between the transmitted and received signals, which may be caused by Doppler shift in the channel or by the difference between the transmitter and receiver local oscillator frequencies [4]. In such situations, the orthogonality of the carriers is no longer maintained, which results in Intercarrier Interference (ICI). ICI results from the other sub-channels in the same data block of the same user. ICI problem would become more complicated when the multipath fading is present [5]. If ICI is not properly compensated it results in power leakage among the subcarriers, thus degrading the system performance.

Figure: Sampling mismatch due to carrier frequency offset (CFO)

B. Synchronization Error: It can be assumed that most of the wireless receivers cannot make perfect frequency synchronization. In fact, practical oscillators for synchronization are usually unstable, which introduce frequency offset. Although this small offset is negligible in traditional communication systems, it is a severe problem in the OFDM systems. In most situations, the oscillator frequency offset varies from 20 ppm (Parts Per Million) to 100 ppm. Provided an OFDM system operates at 5 GHz, the maximum offset would be 100 KHz to 500 KHz (20- 100 ppm.). However, the subcarriers frequency spacing is only 312.5 KHz [5]. Hence; the frequency offset could not be ignored. In most literatures, the frequency offset can be normalized by the reciprocal of symbol duration. For example, if a system has a bandwidth of 10 MHz, and the number of subcarriers is 128, then the subcarrier frequency spacing would be 10M/128 = 78 KHz. If the receiver frequency offset is 1 KHz, then the normalized frequency offset will be 1/78=1.3%. If the normalized frequency offset is larger than 1, only the decimal part needs to be considered. The various methods that can be used to minimize the ICI are maximal likelihood estimation, extended Kalman filtering, pulse shaping, frequency domain equalization, time domain windowing scheme, ICI self cancellation scheme, frequency offset estimation and compensation techniques and Doppler diversity [1] [8].

conclusion

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