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Multicarrier modulation techniques are rapidly moving from the textbook to the real world of modern communication systems

The principles of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation have been in existence for several decades. However, in recent years these techniques have quickly moved out of textbooks and research laboratories and into practice in modern communications systems. The techniques are employed in data delivery systems over the phone line, digital radio and television, and wireless networking systems. What is OFDM? And why has it recently become so popular? This article will review the fundamentals behind OFDM techniques, and also discuss common impairments and how, in some cases, OFDM mitigates their effect. Where applicable, the impairment effects and techniques will be compared to those in a single carrier system. A brief overview of some modern applications will conclude the article.

A typical single-carrier modulation spectrum is shown in Figure 1. A single carrier system modulates information onto one carrier using frequency, phase, or amplitude adjustment of the carrier. For digital signals, the information is in the form of bits, or collections of bits called symbols, that are modulated onto the carrier. As higher bandwidths (data rates) are used, the duration of one bit or symbol of information becomes smaller. The system becomes more susceptible to loss of information from impulse noise, signal reflections and other impairments. These impairments can impede the ability to recover the information sent. In addition, as the bandwidth used by a single carrier system increases, the susceptibility to interference from other continuous signal sources becomes greater. This type of interference is commonly labeled as carrier wave (CW) or frequency interference.

Frequency division multiplexing (FDM) extends the concept of single carrier modulation by using multiple subcarriers within the same single channel. The total data rate to be sent in the channel is divided between the various subcarriers. The data do not have to be divided evenly nor do they have to originate from the same information source. Advantages include using separate modulation/demodulation customized to a particular type of data, or sending out banks of dissimilar data that can be best sent using multiple, and possibly different, modulation schemes.

Current national television systems committee (NTSC) television and FM stereo multiplex are good examples of FDM. FDM offers an advantage over single-carrier modulation in terms of narrowband frequency interference since this interference will only affect one of the frequency subbands. The other subcarriers will not be affected by the interference. Since each subcarrier has a lower information rate, the data symbol periods in a digital system will be longer, adding some additional immunity to impulse noise and reflections.

FDM systems usually require a guard band between modulated subcarriers to prevent the spectrum of one subcarrier from interfering with another. These guard bands lower the system's effective information rate when compared to a single carrier system with similar modulation.

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