OFDM Implementation in GNU Radio

Matt Ettus, Thomas W. Rondeau, and Robert McGwier

Wireless@VT Symposium, 2007

OFDM: Basic Principles

Transmitter Flow Graph

Known preambles

Frame Source

Symbol Modulation

Insert Preambles

IFFT

Add Cyclic Prefix

Scale (1/ N)

Receive Flow Graph

Channel Filter

Symbol synchronization

FFT

OFDM Preamble Correlation

Symbol Demodulation

Build Frame and transfer to higher layer

Signal Acquisition

Signal Detection
Two methods implemented: Maximum Likelihood
Correlate with cyclic prefix J. van de Beek, M. Sandell, P. Ola. Borjesson, ML Estimation of Time and Frequency Offset in OFDM Systems, IEEE Trans. On Signal Processing, vol. 45, no. 7, pp. 18001805, July 1997.

PN Sequence correlation
Transmit known symbol with repetition in the time domain T. M. Schmidl and D. C. Cox, Robust Frequency and Timing Synchronization for OFDM, IEEE Trans. Communications, vol. 45, no. 12, pp. 16131621, Dec. 1997.

ML Estimation
Delay to CP
Magnitude Squared Moving average filter

Peak to 0
Sampled Signals out

Input Delay of FFT Size Magnitude Squared Peak Detector

+
conjugate Magnitude Squared DPLL Sampler

Moving average filter

Angle

S/H

NCO

Gate symbol
Correlate to delayed CP Hold angle for frequency correction

ML Performance
Correlation Peaks

Correlations occur every OFDM symbol

ML Performance
Correlation Peaks

Peaks should occur every FFT length + CP length

ML Performance
Histogram of Peak Timing

Missing a peak inside a packet will cause a rotation in versus the other symbols

PN Correlation
Create sample in frequency with 0s in every other bin:

V0W0X0Y0Z0

IFFT
Repeated Known Symbol in time: ABCDABCD
CP K K

Synchronizer Flow Graph

Delay first half
Magnitude Squared Moving average filter

Signal Power
Moving average filter (Matched Filter)

Detects edge Regenerate for each symbol

Peak Detector Regenerate Peaks

Input

Delay of FFT Size / 2

-1 conjugate Moving average filter Magnitude Squared S/H Angle out Sampled Signals out

Angle

Sampler

Correlate to preamble

Hold angle for frequency correction

Gate symbol

PN Sync Performance
Correlation Match Filtered Regen. Peaks

Correlations occur every packet

PN Sync Performance
Correlation Match Filtered Regen. Peaks

Regenerating peaks by a known amount

PN Sync Comparison

Noise and multipath affects against a perfect signal

PN Sync Performance
Histogram of Peak Timing

Differences do not affect this method as much because the rotation is constant in the packet

Frame Detection
Uses known symbols to correlate and find beginning of frame Once correlated, use the known symbols and receive symbols to generate a 1-tap equalizer Use the equalizer to correct phase shifts and multipath

Fine Frequency compensation

PN Frequency ambiguity

-3.5

-2.5

-1.5

-0.5

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

ML Frequency ambiguity

Frequency

Coarse Frequency compensation corrected in frame detector

Shifted full FFT bin

-3.5

-2.5

-1.5

-0.5

0.5

1.5

2.5

3.5

Frequency

Fine Frequency Error from PN Sync

Frequency error calculated once per packet; does not fix for clock offset drift throughout packet.

Implementation Results

QPSK

QPSK

Repeated Preamble

(1/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Known Preamble 1

(2/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Known Preamble 3

(3/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(4/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(5/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(6/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(7/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(8/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(9/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(10/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(11/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Data

(12/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QPSK

Repeated Preamble (13/13)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

QAM16 Repeated Preamble (1/1)

FFT length=512, Occupied Tones=200, CP Length=128

Profiling Support
Use OProfile Collects amount of processing done by each component of a process Used to tune performance

Started at 100 kHz bandwidth 1.5 hours of profiling increased to 600 kHz

Profiling Support QPSK Receiver

% 29.2 11.5 6.05 5.14 4.31 4.10 3.80 3.15 2.44 1.81 symbol name .loop2 .loop2 gr_fast_atan2f gr_fft_filter_ccc::work gr_single_threaded_scheduler::main_loop gr_ofdm_correlator .cleanup gr_multiply_cc::work gr_fir_ccf_simd::filter gr_fir_fff_simd::filter

Profiling Support QPSK Receiver

1.7259 1.5111 1.4963 1.4815 1.3111 1.2667 1.0593 1.0222 0.9556 0.8963 0.8593 0.8593 gr_divide_ff::work gr_frequency_modulator_fc::work gr_block_detail::input gr_peak_detector_fb::work gr_ofdm_correlator::coarse_freq_comp .loop1 gr_complex_to_mag_squared::work .loop1 gr_fft_vcc::work gr_ofdm_sampler::general_work gr_add_const_cc::work gr_ofdm_correlator::general_work

GNU Radio Interface

Command-line options allow selection of
FFT bins (any value, odd or even) Occupied bins (must be < fft bins) Cyclic prefix length (< fft bins)

Flow graphs are built at runtime

./benchmark R A f 2411M --fft-length=512 \ --occupied-tones=300 --cp-length=128

Should tie directly in with current method to use an PHY/MAC interface card

Future Work and Goals

Hit 1 MHz in receiver More modulations Implement a variation of the PN sync Implement adaptive equalizer over the entire packet SINR calculation Forward Error Correction Performance tuning

Thank You

Questions?