Multicarrier Waveform Harmonization and Complexity Analysis for an Efficient 5G Air Interface Implementation

Abstract EN

The coexistence of multiple air interface variants in the upcoming fifth generation (5G) wireless technology remains a matter of ongoing discussion.

This paper focuses on the physical layer of the 5G air interface and provides a harmonization solution for the joint implementation of several multicarrier waveform candidates.

Waveforms based either on cyclic prefix-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) or on filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) are first presented through a harmonized system model.

Complexity comparisons among five different waveforms are provided.

Then, the complexity of a proposed configurable hardware implementation setup for waveform transmission and reception is evaluated.

As a result, the harmonized transmitter and receiver exhibit 25–40% and 15–25% less complexity in floating-point operations, respectively, in comparison to two standalone implementations of the most complex waveform instances of the CP-OFDM and FBMC families.

This highlights the similarities between both families and illustrates the component reuse advantages associated with the proposed harmonized solution.