Volume IV, Issue II, February 2015

IJLTEMAS

ISSN 2278 - 2540

ICI Reduction Technique for OFDM Systems using

Combining Weight Technique: A Survey
Md. Jafir Alam 1, Garima Saini 2
1

Student, ME (Modular), Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technical Teachers
Training and Research, Chandigarh, India
2

Assistant Professor, Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, , National Institute of Technical Teachers
Training and Research, Chandigarh, India

Abstract- This paper is a detail survey of the ICI reduction

technique for OFDM systems using combining weight
technique. The paper reviews a lot of combining weight
techniques as well as compare different types of combining
weight technique based on ICI reduction performance and cost
constraint. In ICI reduction, optimum combining and nearoptimum combing methods are reviewed. These methods are
highly compatible with most existing data detection,
equalization, and channel estimation methods. It has also very
low complexity.
Key Words: Bit-error rate (BER), Inter-carrier-interference
(ICI), Optimum combining weight, Orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM), Near optimum combining
weights, Signal to noise ratios (SNRs)
Fig 1: Block Diagram of OFDM Systems

I. INTRODUCTION

rthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is

a special form of multicarrier modulation scheme [1].
In OFDM the individual carriers are mutually orthogonal to
each other. OFDM provides high spectral efficiency, low
implementation complexity. It has less vulnerability to
echoes and non-linear distortion. Due to increase in symbol
duration, there is a reduction in delay spread. Addition of
guard band, almost removes the ISI in the system. OFDM
can be efficiently implemented by using IFFT.
With the increasing demand for wireless multimedia
applications, it is desirable to design the wireless system
with higher data rates. Furthermore, the frequency spectrum
has a limited and valuable source, making it necessary to
utilize the available spectrum efficiently and co-exist with
other wireless systems. Thus, future wireless technology is
required to operate at high data rates, at high carrier
frequencies under the environment of high mobility and
large spectrum interference, while the data transmission still
remains reliable and supports multiple users. Orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technology is at
the core of multicarrier systems that play a crucial role in
fulfilling the above requirements [2].

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In a communication system based on OFDM technique, a

receiver needs to synchronize with a transmitter in
frequency, phase and time to faithfully reproduce the
transmitted signal. Frequency offset in OFDM system is
introduced by the mismatch between transmitter and
receiver sampling clocks and misalignment between the
reference frequency of the transmitter and receiver stations.
The sampling clock error appears in two ways.
(1) A slow variation in sampling time instant causes rotation
of sub-carriers and subsequent loss of signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) due to ICI.
(2) It causes the loss of orthogonally among sub-carriers due
to energy spread and adjacent sub-carriers
Let us defined the normalized sampling error as

t =

(1)

Where, T and T' are transmitting and receiving sampling

periods respectively.
And the power is approximated by
3
Pt
(Kt)2, where, K = sub-carrier index
(2)
3

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Hence, the degradation grows as the square of offset t and

the sub-carrier index K. This means that the outermost subcarriers are most severely affected. The OFDM system with
a large number of sub-carriers are very sensitive to the
sampling offset.
II. WIRELESS COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
The wireless channel is the defined as a link between a
Transmitter and a receiver and classified considering the
coherence bandwidth and coherence time. The multipath
channel generally has a bandwidth where channel variations
are highly correlated [3]. This bandwidth is called the
coherence bandwidth (f)c.

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When the symbol transmission rate, channel frequency

selectivity, and channel time selectivity are given, the
transmission performance becomes more selective to the
time selectivity as the number of sub-carriers increases
because the wider symbol duration is less robust to the
random noise, whereas it becomes poor as the number of
sub-carriers decreases because the wider poor spectrum of
each sub-carriers is less robust to the frequency selectivity
[4]. Fig. 2 shows the relation among the number of subcarriers, frequency selectivity, and the time selectivity

When a signal is transmitted through a channel, if (f)c of

the channel is small compared with the bandwidth of the
transmitted signal, the channel is called to be frequency
selective. In this case, the signal is severely distorted by the
channel. And, if (f)c is much larger compared with the
bandwidth of the transmitted signal, the channel is called to
be frequency non selective or flat. For the measure of
frequency selectivity of the channel, there are two important
parameters:
(1) The average excess delay.
(2) The root mean square (RMS) delay spread.
The Rayleigh distribution is commonly used to describe the
statistical time varying nature of the envelope of a
frequency non selective (flat) fading signal, or the envelope
of an individual multipath component. In this case, the
channel is called a Rayleigh fading channel. On the other
hand, when a direct path is available or the channel signal
reflectors, in this case the envelope as a Rice distribution
and the channel is called, a Ricean fading channel.
The time variation of a channel is determined by a lot of
factors, such as the height of the transmitter/receiver
antenna, the speed of transmitter/receiver in motion, the
shape of the antenna, the height of surrounding structures
The three factors to describe the fading characteristics that a
transmitted signal experiences in a channel, the p.d.f. of the
envelope, frequency selectivity, and time selectivity. They
are independent, so there are many combinations to
consider. For instance, when no line-of-sight component is
available in a channel, the data transmission rate is very
high. The receiver is installed in a high-speed cruising
vehicle, the channel will be a frequency selective fast
Rayleigh fading channel, and the data transmission rate is
very low. Then the receiver is installed in a stationary
terminal, the channel will be a frequency non selective slow
Ricean fading channel.

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Fig. 2: Relations among number of Subcarriers [2]

III. INTER-CARRIER INTERFERENCE

Presence of Doppler shifts, frequency and phase offsets in
an OFDM system, causes loss in orthogonality of the subcarriers. This phenomenon is known as inter-carrier
interference (ICI). ICI degrades the performance of OFDM
systems and error floor occurs. ICI suppressed by
equivalently reducing the channel time variation of
information part will turn into a constant which means no
ICI occurs.

Fig.3: Loss of Orthogonality due to Sampling Offset [5]

Frequency offsets are typically introduced by a frequency

mismatch in the local oscillators of the transmitter and the
receiver. The impact of a frequency error can be seen as an
error in the frequency instants where, the received signal is

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sampled during demodulation by the FFT. Fig.3 depicts this

twofold effect. The amplitude of the desired sub-carrier
(SC) is reduced (+), and ICI arises from the adjacent SCs
(0).Mathematically, a carrier offset can be accounted for
by frequency shift f and a phase offset in the low-pass
equivalent received signal.

r(t) = r(t) ej(2ft+)

(3)

It is required to reduce this inter-carrier-interference to a

minimum for proper performance. There are two techniques
has been proposed.
A.
B.

Optimum combining weights.

Near-optimum combining weights.

IV. OPTIMUM COMBINING WEIGHTS AND NEAR

OPTIMUM COMBINING WEIGHTS
Optimum combining weights and near-optimum combining
weights are such techniques which achieves a better
performance with the same computation complexity [6]. In
this technique the performance can be improved if the delay
spread is large. This technique also has the following
advantages.
(1) The proposed methods have very low complexity.
(2)They are highly compatible with most existing data
detection, equalization, and channel estimation methods.
(3) This technique can be directly applied to other cyclic
prefix (CP) communication systems, e.g., orthogonal
frequency-division multiple access, single carrier
frequency-division multiple access and CP-aided code
division multiple access.

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that in some situations the specified CP length is much

longer than the delay spread and there are a considerable
number of ISI-free samples in CP. Conventionally, these
ISI-free samples are simply discarded, and apparently it is a
waste of resources. Therefore, the core idea of this scheme
is to design a method to recycle the ISI free samples in CP
to improve the system performance. Originally, the CP
recycling scheme was used to maximize signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) in the presence of frequency offset, and it was
also applied to suppress the ICI caused by time-varying
channels and directly applied the combining weights to
suppress the phase noise effect.
The CP recycling scheme is applied to suppress the ICI
power incurred by phase noise, although this idea has
already been used in [8,9], nevertheless, the heuristic
combining weights adopted in are apparently not optimum
in the sense of ICI minimization. The optimum combining
methods can be incorporated with other phase noise
mitigation methods since the output of the optimum
combining method can be treated as a Cleaner (less ICIpolluted) input to the traditional phase noise mitigation
methods.
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper described an optimum combining weights and
near optimum combining weights of ICI reduction in
OFDM systems. These methods conclude robust
performance and improve BER performance with negligible
amount of additional computational complexity. These
methods can be incorporated with other phase noise
mitigation methods, since the output of the optimum
combining method can be treated as a cleaner (less ICI
polluted) input to the traditional phase noise mitigation
methods.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Authors would like to thank the Director, National Institute
of Technical Teachers Training & Research, Chandigarh.
Authors would also like to thank the Honble Chairman,
Dr. Md. Shahabuddin, Secretary, members of the
management and Director, Siwan Engineering & Technical
Institute, Siwan, India for their constant inspiration.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

Fig.4: Implementation of the CP combining [7]

Optimum combining weights and near-optimum combining

weights are based on the cyclic prefix (CP) recycling
scheme. The CP recycling scheme is motivated by the fact

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[4]
[5]

S. Hara and R. Prasad, Multicarrier techniques for 4G Mobile

Communication, Artech House, 2000.
U. S. Jha and R. Prasad, OFDM towards Fixed and Mobile
Broadband Wireless Access, Artech House, 2000
R. Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Communication Systems, Artech
House 2004
Van Nee, R, and R.Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Multimedia
Communications, Norwod, MA: Artech House, 2000
L. Wei and C. Schlegel, Synchronization requirement for multiuser
OFDM on Satellite mobile and two-path Rayleigh-fading channels,
IEEE trans. Communi; 43(2/3/4): 887-895, 1995

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[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

IJLTEMAS

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Ch-Ying Ma, Chun-Yen Wu, and Chia-Chi un Huang, A Simple ICI

Suppression Method Utilizing Cyclic Prefix for OFDM Systems in
the Presence of Phase Noise,
EEE Transactions on
Communications, vol.61, no. 11,pp. 4539-4550, 2013
Chun-Ying Ma, Sheng-Wen Liu, and Chia-Chi Huang, Low
Complexity ICI Suppression Methods Utilizing Cyclic Prefix for
OFDM Systems in High-Mobility Fading Channels, IEEE
Transaction Vehicular Technology, vol.63, no.2, pp.718-730, 2014
N. N Tchamov, V. Syrjala, J. RINNE, M. Valkama, Y. Zou, and M.
Renfors, System-and circuit-level optimization of PLL designs for
DVB-T/H receivers, Springer J. Analog Integrated Circuits and
Signal process., vol.73,no. 1, pp. 185-200, 2012
N. N. Tchamov, A. Hazmi, J. Rinne, M. Valkama, and M. Renfors,
Performance comparison of DVB-T and DVB-T2 in the presence of
phase noise, in proc.2010 International OFDM-Workshop, pp. 1-4,
2010

BIOGRAPHIES
Md. Jafir Alam received the Bachelors of
Technology degree in Electronics &
Communication Engineering from Maulana
Azad College of Engineering & Technology
Patna, India in 2007. He is pursuing M.E in
Electronics and Communication Engineering
from National Institute of Technical Teachers
Training & Research, Ministry of Human
Resource Development, Panjab Univsrsity,
Chandigarh, India.
He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronics &
Communication Engineering, Siwan Engineering & Technical Institute
Siwan, Bihar, India. His current research and teaching interests are in
Signal and Systems, Digital Communication and Digital Electronics.
Mrs. Garima Saini received B.Tech degree in
Electronics & Communication Engineering from
Kurukshtera University, Kurukshtera and M.Tech
degree in Electronics & Communication Engineering
from Panjab Technical University, Jalandhar.

Presently she is serving as Assistant Professor in the Department of

Electronics & Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technical
Teachers Training & Research, Ministry of Human Resource
Development, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Her area of interest
Mobile Communication, Wireless Communications & Networks,
Advanced Digital Communication, Soft Computing and Antenna.

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