Impact of Timing and Frequency Offsets on Multicarrier Waveform Candidates for 5G

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how timing and frequency offsets affect various 5G candidate waveforms, focusing on their interference characteristics and synchronization robustness to inform waveform selection.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of five 5G candidate waveforms under offset conditions, identifying sources of interference and their impact on synchronization requirements.

Findings

OFDM is most sensitive to offsets, requiring strict synchronization.

UFMC and FBMC show better robustness to timing and frequency offsets.

C-FBMC and GFDM have intermediate sensitivity, balancing performance and complexity.

Abstract

This paper presents a study of the candidate waveforms for 5G when they are subject to timing and carrier frequency offset. These waveforms are: orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC), circular filter bank multicarrier (C-FBMC), and linear filter bank multicarrier (FBMC). We are particularly interested in multiple access interference (MAI) when a number of users transmit their signals to a base station in an asynchronous or a quasi-synchronous manner. We identify the source of MAI in these waveforms and present some numerical analysis that confirm our findings. The goal of this study is to answer the following question, "Which one of the 5G candidate waveforms has more relaxed synchronization requirements?".