Application of OFDM

Audio Tape Player

After much success in using the VCR as a link, the OFDM system
was also tested using an audio tape player as the channel. The audio
tape player used is not frequency locked, as with the VCR, thus has a
very poor frequency stability. This can lead to a large frequency offset
error in the recording. Since OFDM is very susceptible to frequency
offset errors, the performance of the system was poor on the tape
player

2.3.5.1 Carrier Number

Several test OFDM transmissions were tried using the tape player as a
channel. It was found that the only way to successfully store an image
on the tape player was to greatly reduce the number of carriers used.
Table 12 shows two images that were recorded on the audiotape play
then recorded and decoded back onto the computer. It can be seen that
the image quality when using only 5 carriers was much better than
using 21 carriers. The image transmitted using 21 carriers, has lines
and smears through it due to phase errors. This is due to the frequency
instability of the tape player.

Received Image Spectrum of the received signal

64 point FFT, 21
carriers
(Click the image for a larger
version)
 16 point FFT, 5
carriers
(Click the image for a larger
version)

Table 12 Received images from the audio tape player, using OFDM
with 5 and 21 carriers.

2.3.5.2 Tape Player Performance

The frequency stability and frequency response of the tape player

were measured to assess the effective quality of the channel. All tests
were performed using the audio tape player in conjunction with the
Sound Blaster 16 card, thus the measurements are the combination of
their performances

The measurements were performed using the same technique used for
performance measurement of the VCR (see section 2.3.4.2).

Frequency Stability

A 10 kHz tone was generated using the sound card by playing a

windows 3.1 WAV file generated by a Matlab script. This tone was
then recorded on the tape player. The frequency and amplitude of the
played back signal was then measured over a 10 second period. This
time length was used because it was approximately the same length of
time that is taken in transmitting the fish image. The results are shown
below in Table 13
 Frequency Amplitude
(kHz) Variation (dB)
Max 10.000 0.21
Mean 9.987 0.01
Min 9.823 -0.25

Table 13 Frequency and amplitude fluctuations in a 10second, 10kHz

tone played back from the audio tape player

Thus the frequency offset is -0.13% and the variation is 1.77%. The
level of frequency instability is very high as even for only 21 carriers
this represents the carrier frequencies shifting by up to 40% of a
carrier spacing. This frequency instability would cause large phase
errors to occur

Frequency Response

The tape player / Sound Blaster 16 frequency response is shown

below in Figure 27. The bandwidth of the tape player is about 15 kHz,
plus the response is reasonably flat (± 3 dB). The frequency response
of the tape player should not cause any significant problems for the
OFDM signal

Figure 27 Record / Play back frequency response of the JVC TD-

W444 / Sound Blaster 16 with a sample rate of 44.1kHz