CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The 802.16x or WiMAX is one of the newest standards in wireless communications which are being commercially implemented. WiMax can provide broadband wireless access up to 3 to 10 kilometers for fixed stations and up to 5 to 15 kilometers for mobile stations. WiMAX operates in the frequency range of 2 to 66 Gigahertz. The technology has evolved through several updates to the standard such as 802.16a, 802.16c, the Fixed WiMAX 802.16d (802.16-2004) specification and lastly the mobile 802.16e set that are currently commercially available. WiMAX is currently deployed using MIMO OFDM systems. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems employs multiple transmit and receive antennas to increase the transmission data rate through spatial multiplexing to improve system reliability in terms of bit error rate (BER) performance using space time codes for diversity maximization. MIMO systems exploit multipath propagation to achieve these benefits, without the expense of additional bandwidth. MIMO techniques aim at combining the diversity and data rate maximization aspects of MIMO in an optimal manner.these advantages make MIMO a very attractive and promising option for future mobile communication systems especially when

combined with the benefits of orthogonal frequencydivnion multiplexing (OFDM). OFDM is a combination of modulation and multiplexing. Multiplexing generally refers to independent signals. These independent signals are sub set of one main signal. These independent signals are modulated and then re- multiplexed to create the OFDM carriers. The sub carries in OFDM siganals are orthogonal to each other. Since the sub carriers are all orthogonal to each other there wont be any over lapping between the signals. All the sub carriers are harmonic. Mathematically two signals are orthogonal if the dot product between them is zero, which means these signals do not have any projection on each other. In the ideals case since there are no overlaps, hence ISI will not occur. the presence of delay between symbols causes overlapping between the ends of two consecutive symbols. This can be removed by employing the concept of cyclic prefix, where the tail end of the signal is copied and attached to the front end. By doing so the actual end of the symbol no longer falls in the delay spread zone. This prevents ISI and the front of the symbol which is used to determine the phase of the symbol will not be corrupted. The OFDM signal consists of a number of narrow-band modulation subcarriers critically spaced in the frequency domain for maximum spectral capacity. Each symbol is shaped by a rectangular pulse and this causes strong outof-band side lobs in the frequency domain which can be a

source of adjacent channel interference. Filtering or pulse shaping can be used to remove the side lobes. But it has been found that filtering leads to reduction in the overall transmission efficiency. OFDM uses cyclic prefix to overcome the problems faced due to the occurrence of delay spread and therefore eliminating ISI. Unfortunately the use of cyclic prefix causes loss in capacity. Ever since the first construction of OFDM signals the relatively slow spectral band-edge decay has been a subject of concern in wireless applications. A variety of techniques have been reported to address this issue but todays standards and systems typically still rely on traditional digital digital filters. N-continuous OFDM features a huge reduction in the out of band emitted power compared to conventional OFDM. Also windowing is avoided and filter requirements relaxed which leads to improved efficiency of the cyclic prefix and the robustness to the channel dispersion.