Filter Bank Multi-Carrier Modulation

Abstract: During the last years, multi-carrier modulations have raised a particular interest due to their high spectral efficiency and the possible assumption of flat frequency fading. The most broadly used multi-carrier modulation is the CP-OFDM. It allows very simple equalizations methods and MIMO transcoders which keep orthogonality between carrier waveforms. However, it does not allow any waveform flexibility and is not fully spectrally efficient. Due to the low waveform flexibility its performance is quite limited in scenarios like the frequency division multiple accesses. In order to improve its performance in this case, it is important to have a multi-carrier modulation with the possibility to have a waveform well localized in time and frequency. Grey analysis shows that the only way to get both full spectral efficiency and waveforms well localized in both time and frequency domain is to give up the orthogonality in the complex field. Using filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) with Offset-QAM (OQAM) is one combination which achieves this task. In this thesis, we study this modulation, how it is possible to efficiently modulate and demodulate it but also the transcoder (pre-coder, equalizer or both) that can be used when transmitting through multi-tap and MIMO channels. Another modulation, based on FBMC with OQAM, cyclic offset-QAM (COQAM) tries to make a tradeoff between spectral efficiency and simplicity of the equalization and transcoding methods. In this thesis, FBMC based modulation schemes are tested through different scenario: unsynchronized multi-users, unsynchronized uplink, multitaps channels, SIMO, MISO and MIMO channels. COQAM is tested with some of these scenario when it is considered as relevant to test it.