A Proposal for Scalable 5G New Radio Frames with Enhanced Throughput

This paper investigates, for the first time, a new scheme for increasing the data rates of 5G new radio (NR), through replacing the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal format with a multi-carrier signal resulting in more than 20% improved spectral efficiency. Such signal format is known as spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM), where the subcarriers' orthogonality is intentionally violated to increase spectral efficiency compared to OFDM. A new method to generate continuous cyclic prefix (CP) for SEFDM signals is reported. Furthermore, the work details a newly proposed system structure capable of generating both continuous CP and special pilot signals as part of the SEFDM frame. The behaviour of such system is investigated by comparing its error rates and throughput to 5G OFDM-based systems. Results show that the use of SEFDM signals can increase the throughput by at least 22.8% relative to OFDM, at the expense of power penalty below 1 dB.