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SC-FDMA

LTE Air Interface Course

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SC-FDMA

OFDM vs. SC-FDMA


SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison
SC-FDMA Principles
SC-FDMA Transmitter
SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

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OFDM Benefits and Challenges
OFDM benefits:
Good performance in frequency selective fading channels.
Low complexity of base-band receiver.
Good spectral properties and handling of multiple bandwidths.
Link adaptation and frequency domain scheduling.
Compatibility with advanced receiver and antenna technologies.

OFDM Challenges
Tolerance to frequency offset.
The high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitter
signal. It requires transmitter with linear response in a large range.
Those high linear response amplifier have a low power conversion
efficiency and therefore they are not ideal for Mobile Stations. In LTE
the problem was solved by adopting SC-FDMA for Uplink, which has
better power amplifier efficiency.

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Peak-to-Average Power Ratio in OFDM

The transmitted power is the sum of the


powers of all the subcarriers

Due to large number of subcarriers,


the peak to average power ratio
(PAPR) tends to have a large range
The higher the peaks, the greater the
range of power levels over which the
transmitter is required to work.
Not best suited for use with mobile (
battery-powered) devices

Solution?
-> see next slide

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SC-FDMA in UL

Single Carrier Frequency Division Multiple Access:


Transmission technique used for Uplink
Variant of OFDM that reduces the PAPR:
Combines the PAR of single-carrier system with the
multipath resistance and flexible subcarrier frequency

OFDMA
allocation offered by OFDM.

SC-FDMA
It can reduce the PAPR between 69dB compared to
OFDMA
TS36.201 and TS36.211 provide the mathematical
description of the time domain representation of an SC-
FDMA symbol.
Reduced PAPR means lower RF hardware
requirements ( power amplifier)
SC-FDMA will be used for both FDD and TDD
modes

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SC-FDMA

OFDM vs. SC-FDMA


SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison
SC-FDMA Principles
SC-FDMA Transmitter
SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

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SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison

OFDMA transmits data in parallel across multiple subcarriers


SC-FDMA transmits data in series employing multiple subcarriers
In the example:
OFDMA: 6 modulation symbols ( 01,10,11,01,10 and 10) are transmitted per OFDMA
symbol, one on each subcarrier
SC-FDMA: 6 modulation symbols are transmitted per SC-FDMA symbol using all
subcarriers per modulation symbol. The duration of each modulation symbol is 1/6th of
the modulation symbol in OFDMA

OFDMA SC-FDMA

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SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison

Difference in transmission: for SC-FDMA there is an extra block on the


transmission chain: the FFT (or DFT = Discrete Fourier Transform) block
which should spread the input modulation symbols over all the allocated
subcarriers
FFT or DFT (Discrete
Fourier Transform)

OFDM Transmission SC-FDMA Transmission


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SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison

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SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison

OFDM: power and amplitude SC-FDMA: power and amplitude


12000 12000

10000 10000

8000 8000

6000 6000

4000 4000

2000 2000

0 0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000 0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000

120 120

100 100

80 80

60 60

40 40

20 20

0 0
-120 -100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 -120 -100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120

-20 -20

-40 -40

-60 -60

-80 -80

-100 -100

-120 -120

Lower PAPR for


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the SC-FDMA
SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison Overview

SC-FDMA and OFDMA SC-FDMA and OFDMA


Commonalities differences

The same Variable Bandwidth OFDMA transmits several


BW = 1.4, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20 MHz modulation symbols in parallel
SC-FDMA transmits only one
The same subcarrier spacing single modulation symbol at a time
f = 15KHz

The same symbol duration SC-FDMA is having an extra


Tsymbol = 66,7s block on the transmission chain to
spread the modulation symbols
The same Cyclic Prefix length over all the subcarriers
Normal CP = 4.69/5.12sec
Extended CP = 16.67sec
SC-FDMA is having a lower
The same TTI = 1ms PAPAR = Peak to Average Power
Ratio than OFDMA
The same frame format

Could be used for FDD and TDD

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SC-FDMA

OFDM vs. SC-FDMA


SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison
SC-FDMA Principles
SC-FDMA Transmitter
SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

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SC-FDMA Principles
1. PAPR is the same as that used for the input modulation symbols

This could be achieved by transmitting N


modulation symbols in series at N times the rate.
So that looking in time domain only one
modulation symbol is transmitted at a time.
One can see that the SC-FDMA symbol which is
having 67s is containing N sub-symbols.
N = 6 in the example shown

2. The number of subcarriers which could be allocated for transmission


should be multiple of 2,3 and/or 5

This limitation is imposed by the input of the FFT (DFT) block


which is before the IFFT. This enables efficient implementation of
the FFT.
Note that also the number of Resource Blocks should be multiple
of 2,3 or/and 5

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SC-FDMA Principles
3. The FFT (DFT) output size is always smaller than the IFFT input size

This is because a typical cells uplink capacity will be


greater than 180kHz (12 subcarriers), meaning that
more than one UL channel will be available. Other FFT
UEs will be assigned other groups of subcarriers to (DFT)
use across the uplink channel bandwidth. No two UEs
will be assigned the same 180kHz block to use Subcarriers allocated
simultaneously. for one UE .
.
IFFT
As not all sub-carriers are used by the mobile station,
many of them are set to zero in the diagram, if they .
are not used by other users Subcarriers
allocated to other
users or set to
Note that if the output size of the FFT is equal to the zero

size of the IFFT input then the overall effect is null


since the two operations (FFT and IFFT are
complementary)

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SC-FDMA Principles
4. Adjusting the data rate in SC-FDMA

If the data rate increases more bandwidth is needed to transmit more modulation
symbols (when data rate is doubled the resource allocation in the frequency domain is
also doubled). The individual transmission is now shorter in time but wider in the
frequency domain. For double data rate the amount of inputs in transmitter doubles and
the sub-symbol duration is halved. Note that the SC-FDMA is still 67 s
In the example 6 modulation symbols are sent initially and 12 modulations for double
data rate
Double
the data Halved SC-FDMA
rate sub-symbol
SC-FDMA duration
sub-symbol
duration

Doubled
Initial bandwidth
bandwidth

SC-FDMA SC-FDMA
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symbol 67s symbol 67s
SC-FDMA

OFDM vs. SC-FDMA


SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison
SC-FDMA Principles
SC-FDMA Transmitter
SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

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SC-FDMA Transmitter
s0

b10 ,b11, Modulation d0 g1

Subcarrier Mapping K-to-N


s1
Mapper

Frequency Domain
Frequency Domain

Up-conversion
b20 ,b21, Modulation d1 g2

Time Domain

Generation
CP/Guard
Binary Mapper
Bit DFT
Coded . . . IFFT Modulation
Distrib. (FFT)
Data . . .
. . .
bK-1 0 Modulation dK-1 gK-1
Mapper
sN-1

s0

g0 sa
g1 sa+1
d2 dK-1
DFT g2
d0 d1 sa+2
.
.
. sa+x
gK-1

sN-1
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SC-FDMA

OFDM vs. SC-FDMA


SC-FDMA and OFDMA Comparison
SC-FDMA Principles
SC-FDMA Transmitter
SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

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SC-FDMA Transmitter Simulation

The same assumptions as for the OFDM transmission simulation are


considered (see chapter 3 for more details)

The same data is generated like in the Downlink

The major difference in the UL is the presence of the DFT = Discrete


Fourier Transform Block

Another difference is the considered scenario:


Scenario : 1200 subcarriers transmitted from 3 terminals (each terminal is
having equal allocation i.e. 400 subcarriers)

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Unlike OFDM
QPSK Modulation modulation, this time we
can look at the QPSK
modulated symbol
succession as being a
time series !

Discrete Fourier Transform

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DFT output frequency domain

d0, d1, , dk-1 DFT g0, g1, , gk-1


Time Frequency
Domain Domain

DFT transform the time series (the modulation


symbols input) into frequency domain symbols
sequence.
One can see that the data symbols are
transmitted serially. The SC-FDMA symbol
contains 400 sub-symbols for each terminal.
For simplicity only the first 40 symbols are
shown
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DFT Output
Spectrum Reprezentation
Terminal 1

Terminal 2

The spectrum shows how one


modulation symbol is spread over
the bandwidth
Each modulation symbol is Terminal 3
spread over the entire
40015KHz=6MHz bandwidth
available for each terminal
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Subcarriers Mapping & IFFT

Subcarrier Mapping & IFFT =


Inverse Fast Fourier Transform

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Subcarriers Mapping

Could be achieved by inserting zeros among the output of the DFT

The zero padded DFT output is mapped to the number of subcarriers (IFFT
size)

The position of zeros should determine to which subcarriers the data is


mapped

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Subcarrier Mapping

Terminal 1 transmits in
the 0-6 MHz range

Terminal 2 has been allocated for the


next 400 subcarriers, hence it transmits
in the 6-12 MHz range

Terminal 3 is scheduled in the last


available 400 subcarriers, therefore it
transmits in 12-18MHz range

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IFFT Output Time Domain Representation

x0, x1, , xN-1


IFFT
Time
Domain

The PAR is the same as


that used for the original
modulation symbols
because of serial
transmission

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Subcarriers Mapping

Up - Conversion
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Up-conversion

Time
domain

Frequency
domain

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SC-FDMA Simulation Overview

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