Development of the generic OFDM based transceiver in the LabView software environment

OFDM technique is the most adopted multiplexing technique offering many advantages such as high spectral efficiency, noise, inter-symbol interference and multipath robustness. These have made OFDM a first-choice technique in the majority of today's wireless and wired communication systems. In this work, physical layer of the generic transceiver, based on OFDM, is implemented. Focus is kept on the time and phase synchronization mechanisms as a key functionality of the receiver part. Complete implementation and simulation is conducted in the LabView software environment. BER results are obtained for different system parameters and presented in this paper. The transceiver implemented serves as a model for building enhanced, hardware device which could then be used for testing real, physical channels. Possibilities for the future work of using this device for testing real communications systems, are briefly described in this work. For this purpose, National Instruments 5640R platform, with FPGA core, is presented as an optimal hardware solution. Final section of this paper highlights possibilities of using this hardware solution for in depth analysis, testing and improving of high-demand communication systems.