Comprehensive Performance Comparison Between OFDM-based and FBMC-based Uplink Systems

Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) adopted in fourth and fifth generation mobile communications has drawbacks such as high out-of-band emission and the demand for strict inter-user synchronization. To overcome the drawbacks of SC-FDMA, filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) is being compared to SC-FDMA as a new uplink waveform candidate. Meanwhile, an improved version of FBMC, so called low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) FBMC (LP-FBMC) has been recently proposed. The conventional studies failed to present an intensive and complete comparison under practical conditions, because they did not consider various channel impairments altogether. Therefore, in this paper, we aim to analyze the performances of SC-FDMA, FBMC and LP-FBMC in the practical uplink channel where the major channel impairments coexist, i.e., inter-user frequency/timing offsets and the nonlinear signal distortion caused by a high-power amplifier (HPA). The simulation results show that the inter-user frequency/timing offsets and HPA nonlinearity degrade the performance of SC-FDMA and FBMC, respectively. Meanwhile, LP-FBMC is very robust to both channel impairments.