Spectrally Efficient Multi-Carrier Modulation Using Gabor Transform

Abstract

Non Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (NOFDM) systems make use of a transmission signal set which is not restricted to orthonormal bases unlike previous OFDM systems. The usage of non-orthogonal bases generally results in a trade-off between Bit Error Rate (BER) and receiver complexity. This paper studies the use of Gabor based on designing a Spectrally Efficient Multi-Carrier Modulation Scheme. Using Gabor Transform with a specific Gaussian envelope; we derive the expected BER-SNR performance. The spectral usage of such a NOFDM system when affected by a channel that imparts Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) is estimated. We compare the obtained results with an OFDM system and observe that with comparable BER performance, this system gives a better spectral usage. The effect of window length on spectral usage is also analyzed.