Rate Analysis of SC-FDE and OFDM Systems with Low Resolution ADCs

In this paper, we derive the achievable rate of single-carrier frequency domain equalizer (SC-FDE) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, constrained on low resolution analog to digital converters (ADCs). We assume that there is a full knowledge of channels at both transmitter and receiver sides. We model low resolution ADCs with an additive uniform quantization noise. We consider an ultra-wide band millimeter wave (mm-Wave) system with a frequency selective channel. The channel is based on practical results at mm-Wave frequencies. Our numerical results show that SC-FDE systems with minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizers outperform OFDM and SC-FDE systems with zero forcing (ZF) equalizers at high signal to noise ratio (SNR) regimes. Moreover, benefits of increasing the ADCs resolution are not significant due to exponentially increment in the power consumption of ADCs.