Analysis of a FTN Multicarrier System: Interference Mitigation Based on Tight Gabor Frames

Abstract

Cognitive radio applications require flexible waveforms to overcome several challenges such as opportunistic spectrum allocation and white spaces utilization. In this context, multicarrier modulations generalizing traditional cyclic-prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing are particularly justified to fit time-frequency characteristics of the channel while improving spectral efficiency.In our theoretical framework, a multicarrier signal is described as a Gabor family the coefficients of which are the symbols to be transmitted and the generators are the time-frequency shifted pulse shapes to be used. In this article, we consider the case where non-rectangular pulse shapes are used with a signaling density increased such that inter-pulse interference is unavoidable. Such an interference is minimized when the Gabor family used is a tight frame. We show that, in this case, interference can be approximated as an additive Gaussian noise. This allows us to compute theoretical and simulated bit-error-probability for a non-coded system using a quadrature phase-shift keying constellation. Such a characterization is then used in order to predict the convergence of a coded system using low-density parity check codes. We also study the robustness of such a system to errors on the received bits in an interference cancellation context.