BER reduction in OFDM systems susceptible to ICI using the exponential linear pulse

Intercarrier interference severely limits orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) performance. Nevertheless, it can be mitigated by using Nyquist-I pulse shaping filters. In OFDM-based systems, we assess the exponential linear (EL) pulse and compare it with the best Nyquist-I pulses. EL pulse is characterized by having one additional design parameter, known as β. It is first optimized through extensive numerical simulations. We discovered that EL pulse outperforms the rest of pulses in terms of the bit error rate. This finding was explained by its frequency response, which presents both a broad main-lobe and negligible lateral-lobes. For all pulse shaping functions, we finally determined the signal-to-noise ratio and frequency offset requirements in a real scenario.