Proof-of-concept for post-OFDM waveforms as candidates for 5G
Résumé
Beyond the current state-of-the-art orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), new waveforms are foreseen as key enablers for a highly flexible air interface that addresses the heterogeneous requirements of advanced 5G services. In this context, three promising candidate waveforms are demonstrated using real-time hardware platform: Flexible Configured (FC)-OFDM, Universal-Filtered (UF)-OFDM, and Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (FBMC). The presented work was undertaken in the context of the H2020 European Fantastic- 5G research project, in collaboration between IMT Atlantique, Orange Labs, and Nokia Bell Labs. The demonstration illustrates how we were able to reduce the hardware complexity of these new waveforms (by careful analysis of the signal properties and original scheduling of the computations), which becomes mostly equivalent to state-of-the-art OFDM used in 4G. This is done while bringing new opportunities to enable 5G scenarios such as vehicular communications with high velocity of user device and Machine type communications with relaxed synchronization. Key performance metrics are measured and evaluated with respect to state-of-the-art OFDM, such as robustness against Doppler and synchronization errors, hardware complexity, and throughput.