46

CHAPTER 3

REDUCTION OF INTERCARRIER INTERFERENCE

3.1 INTERCARRIER INTERFERENCE IN OFDM SYSTEMS

OFDM is a spectrally efficient multicarrier modulation technique and it

handles frequency selective channels well when combined with error
correction coding. Although OFDM has proved itself as a powerful
modulation technique, it has its own challenges such as, inter-symbol
interference and intercarrier interference. Both are dual of each other
occurring at different domains; one in time-domain and the other in
frequency-domain. In OFDM systems, the entire channel is divided into N
narrowband subcarriers and the high-rate data are transmitted simultaneously
parallel through the subcarriers. Since the symbol duration is N times longer
than the single carrier systems, the inter-symbol interference is reduced by N
times in OFDM systems. As the subcarriers are orthogonal, the spectrum of
each carrier has a null at the center frequency of each of the other subcarriers
in the system. This results no interference between the carriers and allow
them to be spaced as close as theoretically possible. However, in high
mobility environment carrier frequency offset introduced in OFDM systems
due to Doppler Effect, or frequency differences between local oscillators at
the transmitter and receiver. With this frequency offset, the orthogonality
among all OFDM subcarriers is lost and intercarrier interference is generated,
simulated by Moose (1994) and Pollet et al (1995). So intercarrier
interference is the major setback in OFDM and it needs to be taken into
account when designing the systems.
 47

3.1.1 State of Orthogonality

Mathematically, two vectors are orthogonal if, when multiplied

together and averaged over time, the result is zero. In other words, two
vectors perpendicular to each other are orthogonal and their dot product is
equal to zero.

Frequency

Figure 3.1 Orthogonally spaced carriers

In communications, orthogonality means two signals are

uncorrelated or independent over a symbol interval. When two signals are
orthogonal, building a receiver that responds to one while completely
rejecting the other is possible. In OFDM, cross talk among the subcarriers is
prevented by the orthogonality principle, that is, each subcarrier must be
spaced at intervals of 1/Ts, where Ts is the symbol duration for each
subcarrier. As long as orthogonality is maintained, recovering the individual
subcarrier’s signals despite their overlapping spectrums is still possible.
Figure 3.1 shows the OFDM signal spectrum with four subcarriers (N=4).
 48

Obviously the spectra of the subcarriers are not separated but overlap and the
orthogonal carriers are spaced in frequency by integer multiples of 1/Ts.

3.1.2 Effects of Carrier Frequency Offset

Frequency

Figure 3.2 Effects of Carrier Frequency Offset: Reduced Amplitude

and ICI

The carrier frequency offset has two destructive effects on OFDM

systems. The first is the reduction of the amplitude of the desired subcarrier
and the second is the introduction of ICI, shown in Figure 3.2. The reduction
of the amplitude happens because of the desired subcarrier is not sampled at
the peak of the sinc function of the FFT, since the sinc functions are shifted.
Also, the ICI is caused due to orthogonality is lost between the neighboring
subcarriers. Several methods have been proposed in the literature to mitigate
the frequency-offset problem and to reduce ICI in OFDM systems.
 49

3.1.3 Causes of Intercarrier Interference

ICI is often modeled as Gaussian noise which affects both channel

estimation, and detection of the OFDM symbols, presented by Cheon and
Hong (2002) and analyzed by Sathananthan and Tellambura (2001). Some of
the OFDM impairments resembling carrier frequency synchronization errors,
analyzed by Armstrong (1999), time varying channel, investigated by Russell
and Stuber (1995) and phase noise presented by Armada (2002) causes ICI in
the OFDM systems. Similarly frequency offset and Doppler spread are also
reason for ICI, observed by Chen et al (1998).

3.2 PRESENT ICI REDUCTION TECHNIQUES

The most extended ICI reduction methods are frequency-domain

equalization, time-domain windowing, ICI self-cancellation and the pulse
shaping technique.

3.2.1 Frequency-Domain Equalization

Frequency domain equalization can be used to remove the effect of

distortions causing ICI. In 1993, Ahn and Lee investigated the frequency
domain equalization method to remove the fading distortion in an OFDM
signal where a frequency non-selective, time varying channel is considered.
Once the coefficients of the equalizer are found, linear or decision feedback
equalizers are used in frequency domain. Since ICI is different for each
OFDM symbol, the pattern of ICI for each OFDM symbol needs to be
calculated. ICI is estimated through the insertion of frequency domain pilot
symbols in each symbol. Figure 3.3 shows the demonstration of pilot symbol
inserted among two sub-blocks. In 2000, Chang and Powers proposed a
nonlinear adaptive filter in frequency domain to reduce ICI.
 50

Figure 3.3 Dispersed pattern of pilot in OFDM data symbol

3.2.2 Time-Domain Windowing

Time domain windowing is used to reduce the sensitivity to linear

distortions and frequency errors (ICI). Window may be realized with the
raised cosine or other kind of function that fulfills the Nyquist criterion.
Raised cosine window is used to reduce the ICI effects. However, this
intuitive window is shown to be sub-optimum and a closed solution for
optimum window coefficients is derived by Muller (2001).
Amplitude

Frequency
Figure 3.4 Raised cosine window with different roll-off factors

A condition for orthogonality of windowing schemes in terms of the

DFT of the windowing function is derived by Armstrong (1999). A window
which reduces the side lobes and preserves the orthogonality is called Nyquist
 51

window. In 1996, Muschallik proposed an adaptive Nyquist window is used

to reduce the amplitude of the filter side lobes depending on the roll-off
factor. To reduce the sensitivity to frequency errors, useful part of the signal
and unused part of the guard period is shaped with the Nyquist window
function. Windowing reduces overall Signal-to-noise Ratio (SNR) compared
with OFDM without windowing. All the windows include Hanning, Nyquist,
and Kaiser etc, give some reduction in the sensitivity to frequency offset.
Figure.3.4. shows the side lobe magnitudes of the frequency response of
raised cosine window for different roll-off factors.

3.2.3 Self-Cancellation Scheme

Self-Cancellation method is studied most among other ICI reduction

methods. This method is investigated by Armstrong et al (1998) and
Sathananthan and Tellambura (2001). It is also called as Polynomial
Cancellation Coding (PCC) or (half-rate) repetition coding. The main idea in
self-cancellation is to modulate one data symbol onto a group of subcarriers
with predefined weighting coefficients to minimize the average carrier to
interference ratio (CIR). Due to the repetition coding, the bandwidth
efficiency of the ICI self-cancellation scheme is reduced by half.

3.2.4 M-ZPSK Modulation

This method was introduced by Sathananthan and Tellambura

(2002) and it can be used to reduce both PAPR and ICI. M-ZPSK means M-
point zero-padded PSK, which includes a signal point of zero amplitude in the
constellation as modulation scheme. The M-ZPSK scheme is less sensitive to
frequency offset errors than conventional schemes. The frequency of the bit
pattern of log2M bits in an input symbol can be counted. And the most likely
bit pattern is mapped to a signal constellation of zero amplitude. This
increases the number of vanishing terms in the output of frequency selective
 52

channel and thus reduces the ICI effects more. However, transmission of side
information is necessary to let the receiver which mapping is used.

3.2.5 Correlative Coding

Correlative coding is another method used to compress the ICI

caused by channel frequency errors shown in Figure 3.5. In this coding new
symbols are determined from old symbols using the correlation polynomial
F (D) = 1-D. The expression for carrier to interference ratio (CIR) with
correlative coding is derived and compared with the conventional OFDM,
presented by Zhao and Haggman (1998). Without any loss in the bandwidth
3.5dB improvement in CIR level is gained with this method for Binary Phase
Shift Keying (BPSK).

Figure 3.5 All possible different signal constellation for 4-ZPSK

 53

3.2.6 Tone Reservation

Tone reservation is another method which is also adopted from

PAPR reduction technique, proposed by Sathananthan and Tellambura
(2001). It is based on adding a symbol dependent time domain signal to the
original OFDM symbol to reduce ICI. The transmitter does not send data on a
small subset of carriers, which are used to insert the optimized tones.

3.3 PROPOSED ICI REDUCTION METHODOLOGY

In this heading, a general phase factor optimization algorithm is

proposed to reduce ICI caused by carrier frequency offset. The proposed
phase factor optimization algorithm shortly described that, maximum
interference to signal ratio (MISR) notion is used to measure the resulting ICI
presented in the OFDM systems and it is diminished by fractional spread
sequence (FSS) approach. In FSS, each block of subcarriers is multiplied by a
constant phase factor and these phase factors are optimized to minimize the
MISR, which results the reduction of ICI effect in OFDM systems.

The cumulative distribution function (CDF) and complementary

cumulative distribution function (CCDF) are chosen to evaluate the MISR of
the OFDM signal. The CCDF is the distribution function of MISR. Given the
reference level of MISRo, the probability of the MISR higher, it can be
expressed as,

Pr ( MISR > MISRo ) = 1- ( 1- e –MISRo ) N , MISRo > 0

where N is the number of carriers.

3.3.1 OFDM System with Frequency Offset

An OFDM transmission symbol with N point complex modulation

sequence,
 54

K
j 2 nk / N
xn 1 N X e (3.1)
k
k K

where n=0,1,2,···, N–1 and N 2k+1.There is 2k+1complex sinusoids which

have been modulated with 2k+1 complex modulation values (XK). The
complex envelope of the received sequence, after passing through the
bandpass channel can be expressed as,

K
j2 n k /N
y 1 N X H e w
n k k n (3.2)
k K

where Hk is the transfer function of the channel at the frequency of the kth
subcarrier, ‘ ’ is the normalized frequency offset defined as a ratio between
the frequency offset and the subcarrier spacing and wn is the Additive White
Gaussian Noise (AWGN). The demodulation process with FFT is affected by
frequency offset.

N 1 j 2 nk / N
Yk yne
n 0 (3.3)

The kth element of FFT sequence consists of three components;

sin j N 1 /N
Yk XkHk e Ik Wk
N sin
N (3.4)

N 1
Y X S X lS W
k k 0 l k k
(3.5)
l 0, l k

The first component is the modulation value Xk modified by the

channel transfer function. This component experiences an amplitude
reduction and phase shift due to the frequency offset. The second term is the
 55

ICI caused by the frequency offset and the third one is the complex Gaussian
noise sample. AWGN is not taken into account for further derivations. The
ICI caused by the frequency offset is given by,

N 1 sin l k j N 1 /N j l k /N
Ik Xl e e
l 0 ,l k
N sin l k (3.6)
N

N 1
Ik X l Sl k for 0 k N 1 (3.7)
l 0 ,l k

sin l k j N 1 /N j l k /N
where Sl k e e
N sin l k
N (3.8)

Here, Sl-k represents the ICI coefficients between the lth and kth
subcarrier. The ICI depends on the normalized frequency offset , and the
distance between lth and kth subcarriers (l-k). For zero frequency offset the ICI
coefficient SK reduces to the unit impulse sequence.

3.3.2 Maximum Interference to Signal Ratio (MISR)

The received signal sample for kth subcarrier after FFT can be
written as,

N 1
Yk X k S0 X lSl k (3.9)
l 0 ,l k

The Maximum Interference to Signal Ratio is defined as,

max 2
Ik
0 k N 1
MISR
2
X k S0
(3.10)
 56

From the equation (3.10), MISR is the functions of both X and and
it specifies the worst case ICI on any subcarrier. By minimizing the MISR the
effect of ICI can be reduced.

3.3.3 Fractional Spread Sequence (FSS) Analysis Model

Figure 3.6 Proposed ICI reduction model

In FSS, the input data block is partitioned into disjoint subblocks or

clusters which are combined to minimize the peaks. Here the data frame is
partitioned into M disjoint subblocks which are represented by a vector,
X=[X1, X2, ···, XM]. Assume all subblocks are equal in size and it consists of
a set of subcarriers. Then the weighted combination of M blocks is given by,

M
X a Xm
m
m 1 (3.11)

where (am , m = 1, 2, ···, M) are weighting factors, The IFFT of Xm are called
Fractional Spread Sequence (FSS). The phase factors are chosen to minimize
the peaks and it is to be transmitted to the receiver as side information,
concluded by Muller et al (1997) & Cimini and Sollenberger (2000).
Therefore, the receiver must know the generation process of the transmitted
OFDM signal.

3.3.4 ICI Reduction Using FSS Approach

The data frames are partitioned into M disjoint subblocks and each
subblock is zero padded to make its length N. X´ = (x´0 , x´N-1) now each
 57

subblock is multiplied by a weighting factor am. Thus,

M N 1
m
Ik , FSS am X l Sl k
m 1 l 0 ,l k (3.12)
m
where Xl is the data symbol in the newly formed mth subblock. Hence the
equation (3.12) can be rewritten as,

M N 1
m m m
I k , FSS am I I
k
X
l
S
l k
k (3.13)
m 1 , l 0, l k

m
where Ik is the interference on kth subcarrier of block m. Thus, the total ICI is
the weighted sum of ICI from each subblock. Therefore, the ICI can be
reduced by optimizing the phase sequence a = (a1,a2, ···, aM). To reduce the
complexity of the optimization process, only binary phase factors are
considered (ie. am = ±1). When a1= 1 there are (M - 1) binary variables to be
optimized. Finally the optimal MISR can be found as,

2
max
I FSS
min 0 k N 1 k,
MISR optimal
a1 , , aM 2
X k S0
(3.14)

3.3.5 Simulation Results

Matlab simulations are performed by using 128 subcarriers with

binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation. For N = 128, the MISR
exceeds - 4 dB for only 1 out 104 of all OFDM blocks. Therefore, consider
MISR as a random variable and dependent on data frame. Figure 3.7 shows
that MISR as a function of N for = 0.1. Figure 3.8 shows MISR for M = 8.
In FSS approach, MISR exceeds -6 dB for only 1 out 104 of all OFDM blocks
whereas that of normal OFDM MSIR exceeds -4dB. Figure 3.9 shows how
the performance varies with M.
 58

Figure 3.7 MISR of Normal OFDM System with = 0.1

Figure 3.8 MISR of an OFDM System with = 0.1 and M = 8

 59

Figure 3.9 Variation of MISR with M for = 0.1

There are 2dB reductions in MISR over normal OFDM with M = 8.

Optimized phase sequence requires 2 M-1 computations of MISR. When M is
large, MISR reduction is large. However, the computational complexity
depends on M.

3.3.6 Summary

The error performance of OFDM systems with ICI analyzed by the

proposed method and this method is very precise and independent of any
parameter. The introduction of MISR to quantify ICI effects is also shown to
be very useful in designing ICI reduction schemes at the transmitter. The
simulation results show that the MISR reduction at the transmitter effectively
translates into improvement in error performance. The main drawback of this
method is the optimization of phase factor, which in turn the complexity of
this optimization process.