Title: Limits of the OFDM use in the radio mobile context

Authors: Fatima Zohra Boumediene; Mohamed Tayebi; Merahi Bouziani

Addresses: Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Telecommunication and Digital Signal Processing Laboratory, University of Sidi Bel Abbes, 22000, Algeria ' Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Telecommunication and Digital Signal Processing Laboratory, University of Sidi Bel Abbes, 22000, Algeria ' Department of Telecommunications, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Telecommunication and Digital Signal Processing Laboratory, University of Sidi Bel Abbes, 22000, Algeria

Abstract: Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is very vulnerable to the carrier frequency offset (CFO) generated mainly by the Doppler effect. The inter-carrier interference (ICI) generated by this offset degrades the system performances. Before stabilising its speed, a mobile must pass through a startup phase where the speed varies gradually in time. The same thing happens during a braking; the speed varies up to a zero value. In this paper, we investigate the effect induced by these speed variations on the OFDM system performances. The weight and the speed of the degradations are taken into account for further enhancement of the performances. The limits of the OFDM modulation are depicted in the line-of-sight (LOS) path where a mobile is subject to different types of accelerations. Simulation results show clearly the sensitivity of OFDM when mobile is subject to higher values of acceleration.

Keywords: orthogonal frequency division multiplexing; OFDM; carrier frequency offset; CFO; inter-carrier interference; ICI; Doppler effect; acceleration; multicarrier modulation; inverse fast Fourier transform; IFFT; fast Fourier transform; FFT; bit error rate.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2019.101913

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2019 Vol.23 No.3, pp.275 - 289

Received: 29 May 2017
Accepted: 29 Mar 2018
Published online: 30 Aug 2019 *

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