Efficient Implementation of Filter Bank Multicarrier Systems Using Circular Fast Convolution

In this paper, filter bank-based multicarrier systems using a fast convolution approach are investigated. We show that exploiting offset quadrature amplitude modulation enables us to perform FFT/IFFT-based convolution without overlapped processing, and the circular distortion can be discarded as a part of orthogonal interference terms. This property has two advantages. First, it leads to spectral efficiency enhancement in the system by removing the prototype filter transients. Second, the complexity of the system is significantly reduced as the result of using efficient FFT algorithms for convolution. The new scheme is compared with the conventional waveforms in terms of out-of-band radiation, orthogonality, spectral efficiency, and complexity. The performance of the receiver and the equalization methods are investigated and compared with other waveforms through simulations. Moreover, based on the time variant nature of the filter response of the proposed scheme, a pilot-based channel estimation technique with controlled transmit power is developed and analyzed through lower-bound derivations. The proposed transceiver is shown to be a competitive solution for future wireless networks.