Introduction to single carrier FDMA

Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) which utilizes single carrier modulation at the transmitter and frequency domain equalization at the receiver is a technique that has similar performance and essentially the same overall structure as those of an OFDMA system. One prominent advantage over OFDMA is that the SC-FDMA signal has lower peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). SC-FDMA has drawn great attention as an attractive alternative to OFDMA, especially in the uplink communications where lower PAPR greatly benefits the mobile terminal in terms of transmit power efficiency. SC-FDMA is currently a working assumption for the uplink multiple access scheme in 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE). In this paper, we give an in-depth overview of SC-FDMA with focus on physical layer and resource management aspects. We also show some research results on PAPR characteristics and channel-dependent resource scheduling of SC-FDMA.