Performance evaluation and comparison of different multicarrier modulation schemes

Abstract

Several techniques such as carrier aggregation (CA) and cognitive radio (CR) have been proposed to achieve high data rates to meet the demand of future wireless communication systems. Those techniques pose a strict adjacent channel interference (ACI) requirement. However, currently employed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems suffer from significant spectrum leakage and require large guard bands to avoid ACI. To tackle this problem, there is a need to explore new suitable multicarrier modulation (MCM) schemes that can exhibit lower ACI. In this paper, we compare the conventional OFDM with the OFDM with transmit windowing (WOFDM) and Filter Bank based Multicarrier (FBMC) system to explore potential candidates to fulfil the ACI requirement. Those MCM schemes are compared in terms of better spectral containment, throughput, bit error rate (BER) performance and complexity.