A Survey:On the Waveforms for 5G

Abstract

OFDM is a multicarrier modulation technique which divides the high rate data stream in to multiple low rate data streams. The low rate data streams are modulated using subcarriers which are orthogonal to each other. The property of orthogonality allows simultaneous transmission of lot of subcarriers in a tight frequency space without interfering with each other, so the spectral efficiency in OFDM is improved. OFDM mitigates Inter Symbol Interference(ISI), since OFDM divides the wide band frequency selective fading channel in to many narrow flat sub channels. So OFDM is one of the dominant technology used in 4G/TD-LTE/LTE-Advanced communication systems. However OFDM can hardly meet the requirement for future 5G networks, since OFDM has high OOB and OFDM can support a only one kind of waveform in the whole Bandwidth. This paper presents a fair comparison of the waveform candidate for 5G. Basic principles and characteristics of 5G waveforms namely filter bank multi carrier (FBMC) universal filtered multicarrier(UFMC),generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) and filtered OFDM (F-OFDM) are discussed.