Showing papers on "Telecommunications link published in 2007"

Transmitter Optimization for the Multi-Antenna Downlink With Per-Antenna Power Constraints

Abstract: This paper considers the transmitter optimization problem for a multiuser downlink channel with multiple transmit antennas at the base-station. In contrast to the conventional sum-power constraint on the transmit antennas, this paper adopts a more realistic per-antenna power constraint, because in practical implementations each antenna is equipped with its own power amplifier and is limited individually by the linearity of the amplifier. Assuming perfect channel knowledge at the transmitter, this paper investigates two different transmission schemes under the per-antenna power constraint: a minimum-power beamforming design for downlink channels with a single antenna at each remote user and a capacity-achieving transmitter design for downlink channels with multiple antennas at each remote user. It is shown that in both cases, the per-antenna downlink transmitter optimization problem may be transformed into a dual uplink problem with an uncertain noise. This generalizes previous uplink-downlink duality results and transforms the per-antenna transmitter optimization problem into an equivalent minimax optimization problem. Further, it is shown that various notions of uplink-downlink duality may be unified under a Lagrangian duality framework. This new interpretation of duality gives rise to efficient numerical optimization techniques for solving the downlink per-antenna transmitter optimization problem

A Leakage-Based Precoding Scheme for Downlink Multi-User MIMO Channels

Abstract: In multiuser MIMO downlink communications, it is necessary to design precoding schemes that are able to suppress co-channel interference. This paper proposes designing precoders by maximizing the so-called signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR) for all users simultaneously. The presentation considers communications with both single- and multi-stream cases, as well as MIMO systems that employ Alamouti coding. The effect of channel estimation errors on system performance is also studied. Compared with zero-forcing solutions, the proposed method does not impose a condition on the relation between the number of transmit and receive antennas, and it also avoids noise enhancement. Simulations illustrate the performance of the scheme

Multi-Antenna Downlink Channels with Limited Feedback and User Selection

Abstract: We analyze the sum-rate performance of a multi- antenna downlink system carrying more users than transmit antennas, with partial channel knowledge at the transmitter due to finite rate feedback. In order to exploit multiuser diversity, we show that the transmitter must have, in addition to directional information, information regarding the quality of each channel. Such information should reflect both the channel magnitude and the quantization error. Expressions for the SINR distribution and the sum-rate are derived, and tradeoffs between the number of feedback bits, the number of users, and the SNR are observed. In particular, for a target performance, having more users reduces feedback load.

Uplink Capacity and Interference Avoidance for Two-Tier Femtocell Networks

Abstract: Two-tier femtocell networks-- comprising a conventional macrocellular network plus embedded femtocell hotspots-- offer an economically viable solution to achieving high cellular user capacity and improved coverage. With universal frequency reuse and DS-CDMA transmission however, the ensuing cross-tier cochannel interference (CCI) causes unacceptable outage probability. This paper develops an uplink capacity analysis and interference avoidance strategy in such a two-tier CDMA network. We evaluate a network-wide area spectral efficiency metric called the \emph{operating contour (OC)} defined as the feasible combinations of the average number of active macrocell users and femtocell base stations (BS) per cell-site that satisfy a target outage constraint. The capacity analysis provides an accurate characterization of the uplink outage probability, accounting for power control, path-loss and shadowing effects. Considering worst case CCI at a corner femtocell, results reveal that interference avoidance through a time-hopped CDMA physical layer and sectorized antennas allows about a 7x higher femtocell density, relative to a split spectrum two-tier network with omnidirectional femtocell antennas. A femtocell exclusion region and a tier selection based handoff policy offers modest improvements in the OCs. These results provide guidelines for the design of robust shared spectrum two-tier networks.

Sum Rate Characterization of Joint Multiple Cell-Site Processing

Abstract: The sum-rate capacity of a cellular system model is analyzed, considering the uplink and downlink channels, while addressing both nonfading and flat-fading channels. The focus is on a simple Wyner-like multicell model, where the system cells are arranged on a circle, and the cell sites are located at the boundaries of the cells. For the uplink channel, analytical expressions of the sum-rate capacities are derived for intra-cell time-division multiple-access (TDMA) scheduling, and a "wideband" (WB) scheme (where all users are active simultaneously utilizing all bandwidths for coding). Assuming individual equal per-cell power constraints, and using the Lagrangian uplink-downlink duality principle, an analytical expression for the sum-rate capacity of the downlink channel is derived for nonfading channels, and shown to coincide with the corresponding uplink result. Introducing flat-fading, lower and upper bounds on the average per-cell ergodic sum-rate capacity are derived. The bounds exhibit an O(loge K) multiuser diversity factor for a number of users per cell K Gt 1, in addition to the array diversity gain. Joint multicell processing is shown to eliminate out-of-cell interference, which is traditionally considered to be a limiting factor in high-rate reliable communications.

Enhanced physical layer repeater for operation in wimax systems

Abstract: An exemplary method (500) and repeater (110, 210, 300) are described for repeating using a time division duplex (TDD) radio protocol. A signal is transmitted from a first station to a second station using a downlink and an uplink. The signal can be detected with detectors (309, 310, 855, 856) on the uplink or the downlink. The repeater can synchronize to time intervals associated with the detected signal that are measured during an observation period. The signal can be retransmitted from the second station to the first station if the signal is detected on the uplink and re-transmitted from the first station to the second station if the signal is detected on the downlink. A gain value associated with the downlink can be used to establish a gain value associated with the uplink.

Active Antenna Selection in Multiuser MIMO Communications

Abstract: The paper develops a dynamic antenna scheduling strategy for downlink MIMO communications, where a subset of the receive antennas at certain users is selectively disabled. The proposed method improves the signal-to-leakage-plus-noise (SLNR) ratio performance of the system and it relaxes the condition on the number of transmit-receive antennas in comparison to traditional zero-forcing and time-scheduling strategies. The largest value that the SLNR can achieve is shown to be equal to the maximum eigenvalue of a certain random matrix combination, and the probability distribution of this eigenvalue is characterized in terms of a Whittaker function. The result shows that increasing the number of antennas at some users can degrade the SLNR performance at other users. This fact is used to propose an antenna scheduling scheme that leads to improvement in terms of SINR outage probabilities

Downlink MMSE Transceiver Optimization for Multiuser MIMO Systems: Duality and Sum-MSE Minimization

Abstract: We address the problem of minimum mean square error (MMSE) transceiver design for point-to-multipoint transmission in multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We focus on the problem of minimizing the downlink sum-MSE under a sum power constraint. It is shown that this problem can be solved efficiently by exploiting a duality between the downlink and uplink MSE feasible regions. We propose two different optimization frameworks for downlink MMSE transceiver design. The first one solves an equivalent uplink problem, then the result is transferred to the original downlink problem. Duality ensures that any uplink MMSE scheme, e.g., linear MMSE reception or MMSE-decision feedback equalization (DFE), has a downlink counterpart. We propose two globally optimum algorithms based on convex optimization. The basic idea of the second framework is to perform optimization in an alternating manner by switching between the virtual uplink and downlink channels. This strategy exploits that the same MSE can be achieved in both links for a given choice of transmit and receive filters. This iteration is proven to be convergent.

Distributed antenna communications system

Abstract: A distributed antenna system comprises a base transceiver station, a plurality of distributed antenna units and a signal routing apparatus. The base transceiver station has a plurality of output ports that generate a plurality of downlink signals having overlapping transmit frequencies and containing different communication content. The different communication content is directed toward each of a plurality of mobile units. The base transceiver station also has at least one uplink receive port that receives an uplink signal. The uplink signal includes communication content received from at least one of the mobile units. The plurality of distributed antenna units have coverage areas that are non-overlapping or only partially overlapping. The signal routing apparatus routes the downlink signals to the plurality of distributed antennas such that each of the plurality of downlink signals are transmitted by one or more of the distributed antennas and each distributed antenna only transmits one of the downlink signals.

Bandwidth asymmetric communication system based on ofdm and tdma

Abstract: The present invention relates to a communication system comprising a plurality of terminals each having an uplink transmission unit (1) for transmitting radio frequency OFDM signals at a radio frequency and an access point having an uplink receiving unit (4) for concurrently receiving said radio frequency OFDM signals from at least two terminals, said OFDM signals being Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) modulated, wherein the bandwidth of said uplink transmission units and of the transmitted radio frequency OFDM signals is smaller than the bandwidth of said uplink receiving unit, that the bandwidth of at least two uplink transmission units and of their transmitted radio frequency OFDM signals is different and that the uplink transmission unit is adapted to assign different connections for concurrently transmitting radio frequency OFDM signals to different sub-carriers in the same time slots or to the same or different sub-carriers in different time slots.

System for and method of configuring distributed antenna communications system

Abstract: A distributed antenna system comprises a plurality of antennas and a multi-port hub. The multi-port hub comprises an interface to a telecommunications network and a plurality of transceivers. The multi-port hub is configured to operate in a first mode ('normal' mode) in which the multi-port hub receives a downlink communications signal via the interface and distributes the downlink communications signal to the plurality of antennas using a selected downlink transmission frequency within a downlink frequency range and in which the multi-port hub receives uplink communications signals from the plurality of antennas at a selected uplink receive frequency. The multi-port hub is also configured to operate in a second mode ('listening' mode) in which the multi-port hub receives communications signals from the plurality of antennas at one or more frequencies within the downlink frequency range. The transmission frequency for the first mode ('normal' mode) may be selected based on field strength of the signals received in the second mode ('listening' mode).

Proactive Scan: Fast Handoff with Smart Triggers for 802.11 Wireless LAN

Abstract: It has been a challenging problem to support VoIP-type delay sensitive applications in an 802.11 wireless LAN, because the standard handoff procedure implemented in many current 802.11 products occurs a delay deem unacceptable to VoIP users. To reduce this delay, we have developed a fast handoff scheme called Proactive Scan. It employs two new techniques. The first is to decouple the time-consuming channel scan from the actual handoff, and to eliminate channel scan delay by doing scan early and interleaving it with ongoing traffic in a non-intrusive way. The second technique is a smart trigger that takes into account both uplink and downlink quality and explicitly addresses the link asymmetry which has yet not been touched in previous work. Through implementation and experimentation study, we have shown that Proactive Scan does provide fast handoff and satisfactory performance to VoIP applications. Further, it is a software-only client-only solution that any mobile device can use in any existing 802.11 networks.

Uplink and Downlink Coverage Improvements of 802.11g Signals Using a Distributed Antenna Network

Abstract: A distributed antenna network (DAN) is demonstrated to improve the coverage of in-building wireless services. A doubling in the number of locations with a high throughput is achieved. A detailed analysis of the performance improvement of a three-antenna DAN over a single-antenna system shows that 10-dB more power would be required from the single antenna to achieve a comparable performance. The effect of the additional delay spread generated by the DAN is also discussed, and the conditions under which it does not degrade performance are investigated.

User plane uplink time difference of arrival (U-TDOA)

Abstract: A system for locating a mobile wireless device is configured to communicate with a wireless communications system via a control plane and a user plane. The user plane includes a data channel, and the system includes a server configured to communicate via the data channel with a wireless device to be located. The server obtains from the wireless device information useful for tasking the wireless location system. The information useful for tasking may include information indicative of at least one cell site neighboring a serving cell site with which the wireless device is communicating. This may include information indicative of a serving cell site, a reverse channel through which the wireless device is communicating, and/or a hopping pattern, etc. The system may be used, for example, in connection with a GSM or UMTS wireless communications system.

Combined open loop/closed loop (cqi-based) uplink transmit power control with interference mitigation for e-utra

Abstract: A combined open loop and closed loop (channel quality indicator (CQI)-based) transmit power control (TPC) scheme with interference mitigation for a long term evolution (LTE) wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) is disclosed. The transmit power of the WTRU is derived based on a target signal-to-interference noise ratio (SINR) and a pathloss value. The pathloss value pertains to the downlink signal from a serving evolved Node-B (eNodeB) and includes shadowing. An interference and noise value of the serving eNodeB is included in the transmit power derivation, along with an offset constant value to adjust for downlink (DL) reference signal power and actual transmit power. A weighting factor is also used based on the availability of CQI feedback.

A Framework for Optimizing the Uplink Performance of Distributed Antenna Systems under a Constrained Backhaul

Abstract: It has recently been shown that multi-cell cooperations in cellular networks, enabling distributed antenna systems and joint transmission or joint detection across cell boundaries, can significantly increase capacity, especially that of users at cell borders. Such concepts, typically implicitly assuming unlimited information exchange between base stations, can also be used to increase the network fairness. In practical implementations, however, the large amounts of received signals that need to be quantized and transmitted via an additional backhaul between the involved cells to central processing points, will be a non-negligible issue. In this paper, we thus introduce an analytical framework to observe the uplink performance of cellular networks in which joint detection is only applied to a subset of selected users, aiming at achieving best possible capacity and fairness improvements under a strongly constrained backhaul between sites. This reveals a multi-dimensional optimization problem, where we propose a simple, heuristic algorithm that strongly narrows down and serializes the problem while still yielding a significant performance improvement.

A Cross-Layer Framework for Exploiting Virtual MISO Links in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract: Space-time communications can help combat fading and, hence, can significantly increase the capacity of ad hoc networks. Cooperative diversity or virtual antenna arrays facilitate spatio-temporal communications without actually requiring the deployment of physical antenna arrays. Virtual MISO entails the simultaneous transmission of appropriately encoded information by multiple nodes to effectively emulate a transmission on an antenna array. We present a novel multilayer approach for exploiting virtual MISO links in ad hoc networks. The approach spans the physical, medium access control and routing layers, and provides 1) a significant improvement in the end-to-end performance in terms of throughput and delay and 2) robustness to mobility and interference-induced link failures. The key physical layer property that we exploit is an increased transmission range due to achieved diversity gain. Except for space-time signal processing capabilities, our design does not require any additional hardware. We perform extensive simulations to quantify the benefits of our approach using virtual MISO links. As compared to using only SISO links, we achieve an increase of up to 150 percent in terms of the end-to-end throughput and a decrease of up to 75 percent in the incurred end-to-end delay. Our results also demonstrate a reduction in the route discovery attempts due to link failures by up to 60 percent, a direct consequence of the robustness that our approach provides to link failures

Coordinating Base Stations for Greater Uplink Spectral Efficiency in a Cellular Network

Abstract: We propose an ambitious approach towards lifting the limits imposed by cochannel interference on the uplink spectral efficiency of a cellular network, viz., coordinating several base stations in the reception of users within their coverage area, and suppressing interference between users by means of coherent linear beamforming across the base stations. We evaluate by simulation the potential gain in spectral efficiency from such coordination, when there is 1 user per base station antenna in the network, and all users (but for a small fraction in outage) must be served at a constant and common data rate. We highlight the dependence of the spectral efficiency gain on the number of rings of neighbors with which each base station is coordinated, as well as the underlying signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distribution in the network. Results from this study point to the possibility of doubling the uplink spectral efficiency with 1-ring coordination and nearly quadrupling it with 4-ring coordination, under high-SNR conditions.

Method and apparatus for providing efficient precoding feedback in a mimo wireless communication system

Abstract: Precoding feedback scheme based on Jacobi rotations to generate the feedback in the uplink. For a wireless communication system including a transmitter and a receiver. The system may use either a single codeword (SOW) or a double codeword (DCW). The precoding scheme is based on transmit beamforming (TxBF). Differential feedback is considered, with periodic non-differential feedback to avoid error accumulation or propagation due to differential processing. Precoding feedback scheme based on Jacobi rotations to generate the feedback in the uplink. For a wireless communication system including a transmitter and a receiver. The system may use either a single codeword (SOW) or a double codeword (DCW). The precoding scheme is based on transmit beamforming (TxBF). Differential feedback is considered, with periodic non-dif f erential feedback to avoid error accumulation or propagation due to differential processing.

Antenna Combining for the MIMO Downlink Channel

Abstract: A multiple antenna downlink channel where limited channel feedback is available to the transmitter is considered. In a vector downlink channel (single antenna at each receiver), the transmit antenna array can be used to transmit separate data streams to multiple receivers only if the transmitter has very accurate channel knowledge, i.e., if there is high-rate channel feedback from each receiver. In this work it is shown that channel feedback requirements can be significantly reduced if each receiver has a small number of antennas and appropriately combines its antenna outputs. A combining method that minimizes channel quantization error at each receiver, and thereby minimizes multi-user interference, is proposed and analyzed. This technique is shown to outperform traditional techniques such as maximum-ratio combining because minimization of interference power is more critical than maximization of signal power in the multiple antenna downlink. Analysis is provided to quantify the feedback savings, and the technique is seen to work well with user selection and is also robust to receiver estimation error.

Robust Downlink Beamforming Based on Outage Probability Specifications

Abstract: A new approach to multi-antenna downlink beam- forming is proposed that provides an improved robustness against uncertainty in the downlink channel covariance matrices caused by errors between the actual and estimated channel values. The proposed method uses the knowledge of the statistical distribution of such a covariance uncertainty to minimize the total downlink transmit power under the constraint that the outage probability does not exceed a certain threshold value. Although our approach initially leads to a non-convex optimization problem, it can be reformulated in a convex form using the semidefinite relaxation technique. The resulting convex optimization problem can be solved efficiently using the well-established interior point methods. Computer simulations verify performance improvements of the proposed technique as compared to the robust transmit beamforming method based on the worst-case performance optimization with judicious selection of the upper bounds on channel covariance errors.

Method for transmitting response information in mobile communications system

Abstract: A method for transmitting radio resources in a mobile communication system is disclosed. The method includes receiving a random access channel (RACH) preamble from a plurality of UEs and transmitting response information associated with the received preambles over a common channel wherein the plurality UEs can access the common channel and receive corresponding information. If a HARQ scheme is used when a UE transmits data to the eNode-B using uplink radio resources allocated over the RACH, the eNode-B does not pre-allocate uplink radio resources required for re-transmission and performs allocation of radio resources for a first transmission of HARQ. If the re-transmission is required, the eNode-B allocates the radio resources required for the re-transmission with the NACK signal. If re-transmission is not required, the present invention can reduce an amount of wasted radio resources.

Limited Downlink Network Coordination in Cellular Networks

Abstract: We investigate the downlink throughput of cellular systems where groups of M antennas - either co-located or spatially distributed - transmit to a subset of a total population of K > M users in a coherent, coordinated fashion in order to mitigate intercell interference. We consider two types of coordination: the capacity-achieving technique based on dirty paper coding (DPC), and a simpler technique based on zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming with per-antenna power constraints. During a given frame, a scheduler chooses the subset of the K users in order to maximize the weighted sum rate, where the weights are based on the proportional-fair scheduling algorithm. We consider the weighted average sum throughput among K users per cell in a multi-cell network where coordination is limited to a neighborhood of M antennas. Consequently, the performance of both systems is limited by interference from antennas that are outside of the M coordinated antennas. Compared to a 12-sector baseline which uses the same number of antennas per cell site, the throughput of ZF and DPC achieve respective gains of 1.5 and 1.75.

Frequency Domain Scheduling for OFDMA with Limited and Noisy Channel Feedback

Abstract: In this study we analyze the downlink OFDMA system level performance for three different channel quality indicator (CQI) reporting schemes. The effect of terminal measurement and estimation errors, quantization from formatting and compression, and uplink reporting delays and detection errors are included. We find that a simple threshold-based CQI scheme provides an attractive trade-off between downlink system level performance and uplink CQI signaling overhead, as compared to using a best-M scheme. When applied to the UTRAN LTE system in a 10 MHz bandwidth, we find that a frequency domain packet scheduling gain of 40% is achievable with a CQI word size of only 30-bits. Finally, the effect of applying a so-called outer loop link adaptation algorithm is reported.

Uplink Capacity and Interference Avoidance for Two-Tier Cellular Networks

Abstract: Two-tier femtocell networks-comprising a conventional macrocellular network plus embedded femtocell hotspots- offer an economically viable solution to achieving high cellular user capacity and improved coverage. This paper develops an uplink capacity analysis and interference avoidance strategy in such a two-tier CDMA network with universal frequency reuse. We evaluate a network-wide area spectral efficiency metric called the Operating Contour (OC) defined as the combinations of the average macrocell users and femtocell BS per cell-site that meet a target outage constraint. A contribution of this work is an accurate characterization of the uplink outage probability taking cross-tier power control, path-loss and shadowing into account. Considering worst case interference at a corner femtocell, results reveal that interference avoidance through a time-hopped CDMA physical layer and sectorized antennas allows about a 7x higher femtocell BS density, relative to a split spectrum network with omnidirectional femtocell antennas. These results provide guidelines for the design of robust shared spectrum two-tier networks.

Low-Complexity Orthogonal Spectral Signal Construction for Generalized OFDMA Uplink With Frequency Synchronization Errors

Abstract: In orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, the total spectral resource is partitioned into multiple orthogonal subcarriers. These subcarriers are assigned to different users for simultaneous transmission in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). In an unsynchronized OFDMA uplink, each user has a different carrier frequency offset (CFO) relative to the common uplink receiver, which results in the loss of orthogonality among subcarriers and thereby multiple access interference. Hence, OFDMA is very sensitive to frequency synchronization errors. In this paper, we construct the received signals in frequency domain that would have been received if all users were frequency synchronized. A generalized OFDMA framework for arbitrary subcarrier assignments is proposed. The interference in the generalized OFDMA uplink due to frequency synchronization errors is characterized in a multiuser signal model. Least squares and minimum mean square error criteria are proposed to construct the orthogonal spectral signals from one OFDMA block contaminated with interference that was caused by the CFOs of multiple users. For OFDMA with a large number of subcarriers, a low-complexity implementation of the proposed algorithms is developed based on a banded matrix approximation. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed algorithms improve the system performance significantly and are computationally affordable using the banded system implementation

Joint Beamforming and Scheduling for a Multi-Antenna Downlink with Imperfect Transmitter Channel Knowledge

Abstract: We consider the downlink of a wireless system where the base-station has M ges 1 antennas and K user terminals have one antenna each. We study the weighted rate sum maximization in the case of non-perfect Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT). Some relevant downlink optimization problems, such as the stabilization of the transmission queues under random packet arrivals and the proportional fair scheduling for infinite backlogged systems, can be solved as special cases of the proposed problem. We restrict the transmitter strategy to be based on Gaussian coding and beamforming. Even under this simplifying condition, the problem at hand is non-convex and it does not appear to lend itself to a simple algorithmic solution. Therefore, we introduce some approximations that yield a definition of signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) commonly used in the classical array- processing/beamforming literature. For the simpler (but still non-convex) approximated problem, we propose a powerful heuristic solution based on greedy user selection and a gradient iteration that converges to a local maximum of the objective function. This method yields very competitive results with relatively low computational complexity. Extensive simulations show that, in the case of perfect CSIT, the proposed heuristic scheme performs very closely to the optimal (dirty-paper coding) strategy while, in the case of non-perfect CSIT, it significantly outperforms previously proposed suboptimal approaches, such as random beamforming and approximated zero-forcing with greedy user selection.

Joint iterative interference cancellation and parameter estimation for cdma systems

Abstract: This letter proposes a unified approach to joint iterative parameter estimation and interference cancellation (IC) for uplink CDMA systems in multipath channels. A unified framework is presented in which the IC problem is formulated as an optimization problem of an IC parameter vector for each stage and user. We also propose detectors based on a least-squares (LS) joint optimization method for estimating the linear receiver filter front-end, the IC, and the channel parameters. Simulations for the uplink of a synchronous DS-CDMA system show that the proposed methods significantly outperform the best known IC schemes.

Initial Performance Evaluation of DFT-Spread OFDM Based SC-FDMA for UTRA LTE Uplink

Abstract: In this paper we present an initial performance evaluation of the 3GPP UTRA long term evolution (UTRA LTE) uplink with baseline settings. The performance results are obtained from a detailed UTRA LTE uplink link level simulator supporting OFDMA and SC-FDMA schemes. The basic transmission scheme for uplink direction is based on single-carrier transmission in the form of DFT spread OFDM with an MMSE receiver. Two antenna configurations, SISO and 1times2 SIMO are considered in the analysis of spectral efficiency in addition to adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and L1-HARQ. For assessment purposes, the performance results of SC-FDMA are compared with OFDMA. It is shown that 1times2 SIMO greatly increases the spectral efficiency of SC-FDMA making it comparable to OFDMA, especially for high coding rate. Furthermore, SC-FDMA has a flexibility to increase BLER performance by exploiting frequency diversity.

Introduction to single carrier FDMA

Abstract: Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) which utilizes single carrier modulation at the transmitter and frequency domain equalization at the receiver is a technique that has similar performance and essentially the same overall structure as those of an OFDMA system. One prominent advantage over OFDMA is that the SC-FDMA signal has lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). SC-FDMA has drawn great attention as an attractive alternative to OFDMA, especially in the uplink communications where lower PAPR greatly benefits the mobile terminal in terms of transmit power efficiency. SC-FDMA is currently a working assumption for the uplink multiple access scheme in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE). In this paper, we give an in-depth overview of SC-FDMA with focus on physical layer and resource management aspects. We also show some research results on PAPR characteristics and channel-dependent resource scheduling of SC-FDMA.