Effect of Variable Cyclic Prefix Length on OFDM System Performance over Different Wireless Channel Models

摘要

A Cyclic Prefix (CP) is a significant feature of an OFDM waveform. It is used to completely eliminate both Inter-Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) as long as the CP length is greater than the channel delay spread. By eliminating both ISI and ICI, the CP compensates for the effect of the multipath dispersion; but it consumes a considerable amount of the scarce spectrum and the power. Conventional OFDM uses a fixed and large CP length to overcome the ISI caused by channel delay spread under wireless mobile environment. This approach may degrade the overall spectral efficiency as well as consumes relatively more transmitter energy. Therefore, there is a need to adopt the CP length according to instantaneous channel parameters. In this paper, we presented a method for investigating the effect of varying the CP length on OFDM system performance over different multipath channel models. We estimated the variable CP length based on the RMS delay spread of the channels’ power delay profile (PDP). According to this method, the estimated CP length optimizes the system capacity and improves the overall system performance. We showed that this approach could lead to a mathematical formula presenting the relationship between the CP length and the RMS delay spread of the channels.