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Narrowband Interference in OFDM System

Khaizuran Abdullah, Nadiatul Fatiha Hussin and Saidatul Izyanie Kamarudin

1.0 INTRODUCTION The nature of future wireless applications demands high data rates. The idea of multi-carrier transmission has surfaced recently to be used for combating the hostility of wireless channel and providing high data rate communications. OFDM is a special form of multi-carrier transmission where all the subcarriers are orthogonal to each other. OFDM promises a high user data rate transmission capability at a reasonable complexity and precision. Future telecommunication systems must be spectrally efficient to support a number of high data rate users. OFDM uses the available spectrum very efficiently which is very useful for multimedia communications. For all of the above reasons, OFDM has already been accepted by many of the future generation systems [1]. OFDM is a special case of multicarrier transmission, where a single data stream is transmitted over a number of lower rate subcarriers [2]. One of the main reasons to use OFDM is to increase the robustness against frequency selective fading or narrowband interference. In a multicarrier system, only a small percentage of the subcarriers will be affected by the interference. In the mid-1960s, the idea of using parallel data transmission and frequency division multiplexing was published. It started with division of the total signal frequency band into N non-overlapping frequency subchannels. Then, each sub-channel will be modulated by separate symbol and then the N sub-channels are frequency-multiplexed. This led to inefficient use of bandwidth. Then the idea to use parallel data and frequency division multiplexing with overlapping subchannels is introduced [2]. This may save almost 50% of the bandwidth. To make the sub-channels overlapping it is important to make sure the orthogonality between the different modulated carriers. Researches have been done multicarrier transmission based on orthogonal frequency, like in 1971 Weinstein and Ebert applied the discrete Fourier transform to parallel data transmission system in the process of modulation and demodulation [2]. In 1960s, the OFDM system is used in several military systems such as KATHRYN which used up to 34 parallel low-rate phase-modulated channels [2]. In the 1980s, OFDM was focused for high-speed modems, digital mobile communications, and high density recording. Furthermore, in 1990s, more aggressive development has been done for wideband data communication over mobile radio FM channels, asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), digital audio and more. OFDM has become the physical layer choice for many wireless communication systems because its design ability to operate in unlicensed spectrum [11] is featured in the current wireless local area network (WLAN) and wireless metropolitan area network (WMAN). These systems however must share spectrum with other unlicensed systems which produces narrowband interference in WLAN and WMAN. The important issue need to be considered is the effect of radio frequency interference (RFI) to the OFDM system. RFI can be categorized into two types which are narrowband interference and broadband interference [10].

Narrowband interference arises from intentional transmission such as radio and TV stations, pager transmitters, cell phones, baby monitors, microwave ovens and garage door openers which are sharing with the OFDM spectrum [10][11]. The narrowband interference spectrum resides within an OFDM spectrum. Consequently, the performance of OFDM systems becomes degraded because the OFDM subcarriers which are adjacent to the narrowband interference spectrum may be distorted. In contrast, broadband interference is caused by the devices with a rich harmonic content which interferes over a very broad spectrum. The potential sources of broadband interference is anywhere electrical power is being turned off and on rapidly such as power lines, electric motors and bug zappers [10]. The broadband spectra are embedded within almost every subcarrier in an OFDM symbol [13]. This will cause the inability to filter it effectively at the receiver. The chapter discusses the bit error rate (BER) performance of OFDM with narrowband interference in comparison with OFDM without narrowband interference. The broadband interference investigation may be left for future research.

3.0 OFDM Background


OFDM has grown to be the most popular communications systems in high speed communications in the last decade [12]. OFDM is a special case of multicarrier transmission where a single data stream is transmitted over a number of lower rate subcarrier. Because the symbol duration increases for the lower rate parallel subcarriers, the relative amount of dispersion in time cause by multipath delay spread is decrease. OFDM can be seen as modulation technique or a multiplexing technique. One of the main reasons to use OFDM is to increase the robustness against frequency selective fading or narrowband interference. In a single carrier system, a single fade or interferer can cause the entire link to fail, but in multicarrier system, only a small percentage of the subcarriers will be affected. Advantages of OFDM: It is an efficient way to deal with multipath; for a given delay spread, the implementation complexity is significantly lower than that of single carrier system with an equalizer. In relatively slow time-varying channels, it is possible to significantly enhance the capacity by adapting the data rate per subcarrier according to the signal-tonoise ration of that particular subcarrier. It is robust against narrowband interference, because such interference affects only a small percentage of the subcarrier. It makes single-frequency network possible, which is especially attractive for broadcasting application.

Disadvantages of OFDM: It is more sensitive to frequency offset and phase noise. It has relatively large peak-to-average power ratio, which tend to reduce power efficiency of the RF amplifier. [2] Block Diagram of OFDM
Modulatio n Mapping I Q IFFT RF Modulato Q r Channel I

4.0

Serial Serial Tx Data To Parallel

Transmitter
Serial Rx Data Paralle l to Serial

Modulatio n Slicer

I Q

FFT

I Q

RF Demodulat or

Receiver Figure 4.1 Block diagram of OFDM The explanation of each of block diagram of Figure 4.1 is discussed below: 4.1 SERIAL TO PARALLEL CONVERSION

In OFDM, data transmitted in the form of serial data stream. Thus, this Serial to Parallel Conversion stage converts the input serial bit stream to the data transmitted in each OFDM symbol. The data allocated to each symbol depends on the modulation scheme used and the number of subcarriers. Examples of modulation scheme are 16QAM and 8-PSK. In 16-QAM each carrier will carry 4 bits of data. The data will be converted back to the original serial data stream at the receiver [2]. 4.2 SUBCARRIER MODULATION

Once each subcarrier has been allocated bits for transmission, they are mapped using a modulation scheme to a subcarrier amplitude and phase, which is represented by a complex In-phase and Quadrature-phase (IQ) vector. For example 16-QAM mapped 4

bits for each symbol. Each combination for the 4 bits of data corresponds to a unique IQ vector. In the receiver side, the receiver maps the receive IQ vector back to the data word by performing subcarrier demodulation. Each of the IQ points is blurred in location due to the channel noise. The receiver has to estimate the nearest original transmission IQ vector [2]. 4.3 FREQUENCY TO TIME DOMAIN CONVERSION

After the data subcarriers are set to an amplitude and phase, all unused subcarriers are set to zero. This arranges the OFDM signal in the frequency domain. Then, inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) is used to convert the signal into time domain in order to be transmitted [2]. 4.4 RF MODULATION

A baseband signal generated from OFDM modulator must be mixed up to the required transmission frequency. This can be implemented by two ways: analog techniques or digital up convertor. Both techniques complete the same operation. However the performance of the digital modulation will tend to be more accurate due to improve matching between the processing of the In-phase and Quadrature-phase channels, and the phase accuracy of the digital IQ modulator [2]. 4.5 IFFT and FFT

Inverse Fast Fourier Transform (IFFT) is used to generate OFDM symbols. The data bit is represented in frequency domain and it is used in transmitter to handle the process since IFFT convert signal from frequency domain to time domain. IFFT is defined as the following equation: 0 (2.1)

FFT function can be used to find IFFT function with the changes in certain properties. The function below is Twiddle factor for Fast Fourier Transform (FFT): (2.2) The Twiddle factor for IFFT can be found by adding a scaling factor of 1/N and replacing twiddle factor value (Wnk ) with the complex conjugate (W-nk ) to the Twiddle factor of FFT. [2] 4.5 Multiplexing of OFDM

In general, the multiplexing schemes are based upon time, frequency and code. Depending upon the scheme multiplexing is done before and/or after the channel coding and/or modulation.

Figure 4.4 Multiplexing An OFDM signal consists of a sum of subcarriers that are modulated by using Phase Shift Keying (PSK) or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). IFFT will modulate a block of input QAM values onto a number of subcarriers. In the receiver, the subcarriers are demodulated by FFT. FFT performs the reverse operation of an IFFT. 4.5.1 Improve throughput To improve the trough put, more than one carrier is used.

Figure 4.5 Multiple carriers used in OFDM [19] Figure 4.5 shows the division of frequency before entering IFFT. It shows multiple carriers which have been used in OFDM in order to improve the throughput. Thus, at the receiver the data is not easily affected by multipath distortion [3].

4.5.2

Subcarrier spacing

The sub-carriers are spaced at regular intervals called the sub-carrier frequency spacing (F). The sub-carrier frequency relative to the center frequency is k F where k is the sub-carrier number. Figure 6 shows the subcarrier spacing.

Figure 4.6 Subcarrier spacing [19] 4.5.3 Serial symbol transmission

A constellation diagram is a representation of a digital modulation scheme in the complex plane. Each symbol will be representing in the real and imaginary axes. The axes are often called in-phase (I axis) and the quadrature-phase (Q axis). Below are the digital modulation overview about I and Q component of signal. Figure 7 is presentation of signal in complex plane. Q and I is 90 degree in phase to each other as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 4.7 Signal in complex plane

Figure 4.8 In-phase and quadrature-phase

Figure 4.9 OFDM symbol transmission [19] 4.5.4 Parallel symbol transmission

Figure 4.10 IFFT [19] Multiple carriers will transmit many symbols in parallel. Each carrier may have different modulations BPSK, QPSK 64QAM. Constellation display which consist of composite of all OFDM sub-carrier symbol

Figure 4.11 Constellation Display which is composite of all OFDM Sub-carriers [19] Figure 4.11 shows the individual subcarrier which is orthogonal to each other. The orthogonality may allow each subcarrier overlapping between symbols transmitted. The transmitted symbol can be retrieved back at the receiver by using FFT. 4.6 Subcarrier

Generation of subcarrier by IFFT

Figure 4.13 A frequency domain signal comes out as a time domain signal out of IFFT In OFDM, subcarriers are orthogonal to each other. The orthogonality allows simultaneous transmission on a lot of subcarriers in a tight frequency space without interference from each other [4].

Figure 4.14 Simultaneous transmissions on a lot of subcarriers in a tight frequency space

Figure 4.15 Signal representations in (a) time domain and (b) frequency domain Forward FFT takes a random signal, multiplies it successively by complex exponentials over the range of frequencies, sums each product and plot the results as a coefficient of that frequency. The coefficients are called a spectrum and represent how much of that frequency is present in the input signal. The result of the FFT in common understanding is a frequency domain signal. FFT in sinusoids, (2.3) x(n) the coefficients of the sines and cosines of frequency 2k / N k the index of the frequencies over the N frequencies n the time index In equation (2.3), x(k) is the value of the spectrum for the kth frequency and x(n) is the value of the signal at time n. The IFFT takes this spectrum and converts the whole thing back to time domain signal by again successively multiplying it by a range of sinusoids. The equation for IFFT is, (2.4) In order to ensure that the subcarrier frequencies do not interfere with each other during detection, the subcarriers are selected from a set of orthogonal signals. This means that the spectral peak of each subcarrier overlaps with the spectral nulls of the remaining carriers. This can be achieved by ensuring that the individual subcarriers are spaced by an integer multiple of the inverse of the symbol duration. Highest spectral

efficiency will be achieved when the individual carriers/subcarriers are placed precisely one symbol duration apart [5]. One of the ways to implement OFDM is using the Discrete Fourier Transform pair (IDFT/DFT). The implementation of an Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform (IDFT) which corresponds to OFDM modulation is shown in Figure 2.16;

Figure 4.16 OFDM modulation using IFFT [5] Where N = Size of DFT K = Frequency Index N = Time Index X(k) = Data corresponding to kth subcarrier X(n) = Time domain signal 5.0 Narrowband Interference

Narrowband Interference is commonly found in communication system. Sources of narrowband interference potentially come from other sources with frequency bands below 5 MHz. The unintentional transmission such as radio and TV stations, pager transmitters, and cell phones are the source of narrowband interference. In addition, the source also comes from other unlicensed controlled systems such as cordless phones and remote controlled of the garage [13]. Their spectrum resides within OFDM spectrum, thus, degraded the performance of the OFDM system. The important issue need to be considered is the effect of radio frequency interference (RFI) to the OFDM system. RFI can be classified into two types which are narrowband interference and broadband interference [10].

The definition of narrowband interference is a band pass signal that has a bandwidth much less than the bandwidth of and OFDM signal [14]. Narrowband interference arises from intentional transmission such as radio and TV stations, pager transmitters and cell phones [10]. It may also come from other unlicensed system such as baby monitors, microwave ovens and garage door openers which are sharing bandwidth with the OFDM spectrum [11]. At the receiver, the narrowband interference resides within an OFDM spectrum [7]. The OFDM subcarriers which are adjacent to it may be affected. The presence of NBI can severely degrade the performance of the OFDM system [8]. Conversely, broadband interference spectra are embedded almost the entire of OFDM symbol [13]. This caused inability to filter it effectively at the receiver. Thus the investigation of broadband interference will be left out for future works. This project main focus is on narrowband interference in OFDM system. 5.1 System model The system model in this project is an OFDM system consists of a received signal with and additive white Gaussian noise and narrowband interference at the front OFDM receiver [2], [15], [16]. In general the system model can be described in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1

The system model for narrowband interference in OFDM

The received signal r (t ) can be expressed as follows [2], [19], [140]: r (t ) = h(t ) * y (t ) + i (t ) + n(t ) (2.5) h(t ) is the channel impulse response, y (t ) is the transmitted signal in time where domain, i (t ) is the narrowband interference and n(t ) is an AWGN.

6.0 RESULT AND DISCUSSION

The result of this project is divided into two main parts. The first part is narrowband interference in OFDM system spectrum. The second part is BER plot of OFDM with narrowband interference. 6.1 Narrowband interference in OFDM
OFDM spectrum 10

-10 BPF Spec.,dB

-20

-30

-40

-50 -0.25

-0.2

-0.15

-0.1 -0.05 0 0.05 0.1 Normalized Frequency, f


n

0.15

0.2

0.25

Figure 6.1 OFDM spectrum Figure 6.1 shows the OFDM spectrum of 16-QAM modulation scheme OFDM signal being transmitted.

OFDM with AWGN 10

-10 AWGN

-20

-30

-40

-50 -0.25

-0.2

-0.15

-0.1 -0.05 0 0.05 0.1 Normalized Frequency, f


n

0.15

0.2

0.25

Figure 6.2 OFDM with AWGN Figure 6.2 displays the OFDM spectrum after the transmitted signal going through the AWGN channel. AWGN will add noise to the signal being transmitted.

OFDM with NBI 50 40 30 20 OFDM with NBI 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -0.25 -0.2 -0.15 -0.1 -0.05 0 0.05 0.1 Normalized Frequency, f
n

0.15

0.2

0.25

Figure 6.3 Narrowband interference in OFDM spectrum

The figure above shows the spectrum of narrowband interference in OFDM system. The signal now consists of the AWGN and narrowband interference. Since the narrowband interference is a single-tone sinusoid, thus it will only affect some part of the OFDM spectrum. The subcarrier adjacent to the narrowband interference will be affected. 6.2 BER performance of OFDM using 16-QAM
0

BER of OFDM 16QAM with NBI


X: 3 Y: 0.1025

10

10

-1

10 Bit Error Rate

-2

X: 3 Y: 0.02288

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

OFDM with narrowband interference OFDM without narrowband interference 10


-6

5 SNR(dB)

10

Figure 6.4 Comparison of BER OFDM 16-QAM with NBI and without NBI The figure 6.4 shows the plotting of BER of OFDM 16QAM with narrowband interference (NBI). From the graph it can be seen that the performance of OFDM system is degraded due to the presence of NBI. For example, at 3 dB of SNR, the BER without NBI is 0.02288 whereas the BER with NBI is 0.1025. The error for the first is about 23 out of 1000. On the other hand, the second is 100 out of 1000. Therefore, more errors were found when there is NBI.

6.3

BER performance of OFDM using 4-QAM and 64-QAM

1 0

BRfO MQ w N E o F 4 A ih B D - Mt I O Mih aobn i t re ne F w nr w d e r c D t r a nfe O Mihunrobni t rene F wot a w dn f r c D t r a e e

1 0 B E r R te it rro a

X :3 Y . 28 :0 28 0

1 0

1 0

1 0

1 0

5 SRB Nd) (

1 0

Figure 6.5 Comparison of BER OFDM 4-QAM with NBI and without NBI Figure 6.5 illustrates the plotting of BER of OFDM 4-QAM with NBI and without NBI. In comparison, both of the BER are almost have the same performance. When SNR is equal to 3dB BER is equal to 0.02288. That is about 20 out of 1000 errors. Thus, the performance of 4-QAM is not so much affected by NBI.
10
0

BER of OFDM 64-QAM with NBI

10

-1

X: 3 Y: 0.2033 X: 3 Y: 0.02288

10 Bit Error Rate

-2

10

-3

10

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10

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OFDM with narrowband interference OFDM without narrowband interference 0 1 2 3 4 5 SNR(dB) 6 7 8 9 10

Figure 6.6 Comparison of BER OFDM 64-QAM with NBI and without NBI

Figure 6.6 displays BER plot of 64-QAM OFDM with NBI and without NBI. It indicates that the performance of 64-QAM OFDM is degraded due to NBI. For instance, when SNR is equal to 3dB BER is 0.2033. The error found in 64-QAM is about 200 out of 1000. In contrast, there is only 20 errors out of 1000 in 64-QAM without NBI. In comparison with section 6.2, more errors are present in 64-QAM and less errors in 4-QAM. This is due to bit involved in the modulation. 4-QAM has less error but its data rates is lower compare to 16-QAM. Oppositely, 64-QAM has higher data rates but it is susceptible to more errors. 64-QAM is more complex and requires more bandwidth but, more errors generated. This is referred to BER Figure 4.6 for 64-QAM. That is why is this project 16-QAM has been selected since it gives an intermediate result of QAM modulation between 4-QAM and 64-QAM. Besides, 16-QAM is widely used in OFDMs applications as one of the standard modulation scheme. Examples of the application are Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) and IEEE802.11 [18], and also, WiFi and WiMAX. 7.0 CONCLUSION

This chapter discussed and concluded what have been fulfilled from the project by reviewing the objectives and concept of the project acquired. The initial steps in conducting this project is by carry out a comprehensive research and investigation. The first part is about the understanding of basic Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and investigating the effect of Narrowband interference on the system. MATLAB coding has been generated in order to understand both of the concepts. The methodology of the implementation of the project can be achieved through understanding the basic of OFDM system, how the narrowband interference will affect the system, and coding of MATLAB. 7.1 FUTURE WORK

For the future work, the broadband interference investigation could be done to improve the communication system. This is because not only narrowband interference presents in the OFDM system but also broadband. The difference is broadband interference affect almost the entire OFDM spectrum. Thus, broadband interference is significant also. Besides, the studies of mitigation techniques of narrowband interference in OFDM could be done in future to improve the performance of OFDM system. Example of the mitigation techniques in [13] are frequency domain cancellation, excision filtering and etc. Last but not least is the peak-to-average-power ratio problem which can degrade the performance of OFDM system. Thus, the study of it could be done in future to investigate its effect in OFDM system.

8.0 REFERENCE

[1]

Marchetti, N., Rahman, M. I., & Kumar, S. OFDM: Principles and Challenges, New Directions in Wireless Communications Research, Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 29-62, 2009. R. V. Nee, & R. Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Multimedia Communication, London: Artech House, 2000. Introduction to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex Technology, 2004, Retrieved from www.keithley.com: http://www.ieee.li/pdf/viewgraphs/introduction_orthogonal_frequency_division _multiplex.pdf. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing(OFDM), 2004, Retrieved from http://www.complextoreal.com/chapters/ofdm2.pdf.

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[5] BIBLIOGRAPHY \l 1033 Navalekar, A., Design of a High Data Rate Audio Band, 2006. [6] Sklar, B., Digital Communications Fundamentals and Application, New Jersy: Prentice Hall, 2001. Marey, M., & Steendam, H., Analysis of the narrowband interference effect on OFDM timing synchronization, IEEE Transaction on signal processing, pp. 4558-4566, 2007. Frein, C. d., Flanagan, M., & Fagan, A., "OFDM Narrowband Interference Estimation Using Cyclic Prefix Based Algorithm", n.d. QAM and QPSK, n.d, http://www.ele.uri.edu/Courses/ele436/labs/QAM.pdf Radio-Sky Journal. (2001, March). http://www.radiosky.com/journal0901.html Retrieved Retrieved from from

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[9] [10] [11]

A. J. Coulson, "Bit Error Rate Performance of OFDM in Narrowband Interference with Excision Filtering", IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 5, pp. 2484-2492, 2006. A. S. Osman, (December 2006). BER Performance Study of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) K. Abdullah, (August 2009). Interference Mitigation Techniques for Wireless OFDM. pp. 81-85

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[14] [15]

J. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Communication Systems Engineering, Second ed., New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002. D Zhang, P. Fan and Z. Cao "A Novel Narrowband Interference Canceller for OFDM systems," Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, pp. 1426-1430, 2004. Z. Zhang, S.C. Chan, and H. Cheng, "Robust adaptive channel estimation of OFDM systems in time-varying narrowband interference," 2005. K. Abdullah, N.A. Hinai, A.Z. Sadik and Z. M. Hussain, "Circular 16-QAM Modulation Scheme for Wavelet and Fourier Based OFDM Systems", The 5th IEEE GCC Conference, Kuwait, March 2009. K. Abdullah, A. F. Ismail, W. Hashim and Z. M. Hussain, An Optimal Circular 16-QAM Modulation Technique for Wavelet and Fourier Based OFDM, International Conference on Computer and Communication Engineering, Kuala Lumpur, May 2010 (2004). Retrieved from OFDM/MIMO Master Class Understanding the physical layer principles of WLAN,WiMAX and LTE.

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