Performance evaluation of time-domain interleaved OFDM systems using software defined radio platforms

Abstract

In this work, a prototype is developed and used to evaluate the performance of the time-domain interleaved (TDI) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system reported in [1]. The TDI-OFDM system is a robust, secured and efficient digital communication system that can be implemented using low complexity signal processing algorithms at the Physical Layer. The gained benefits stem from the fact that the TDI process introduces time and frequency diversity to the OFDM systems. As a proof-of-concept, this work aims at using a testbed system implemented using software-defined radio (SDR) platforms to evaluate the performance of the TDI-OFDM in real-life scenarios. Extensive measurements were performed to characterize the statistical performance of the developed system and to examine its performance under realistic operating conditions. Unlike computer simulation, practical systems suffer from imperfect channel estimation and synchronization, and other radio frequency (RF) impairments. The obtained measurement results show that the TDI-OFDM is robust against various channel and implementation imperfections, and substantially outperforms conventional OFDM systems in terms of error probability, in addition to the inherent security.