Performance analysis of OFDM under frequency selective fading in varying power delay profile

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is the multiple access technology for Fourth Generation(4G) communications. Due to its resilience to multipath fading and support for high data rates at minimal complexity, it has an edge over other technologies like Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA). A wireless channel is characterized by multi-path propagation leading to frequency selective fading. In this paper, an analysis is drawn as to the effect of number of resolvable paths and power decay on the performance of OFDM. The results demonstrate that the received signal performance improves with the increase in number of resolvable paths and degrades with the increase in power decay factor.