Coexistence of systems based on 5G waveforms with legacy OFDM devices (2017)

This demonstration was presented at CROWNCOM 2017 by Quentin Bodinier and Carlos Bader.

We envision that future networks will consist of different services that will coexist without synchronization or coordination on the same spectral bands. In particular, newly inserted cognitive devices may be called to coexist with legacy incumbent OFDM-based systems, in particular in the bands currently used for LTE-A cellular communication or digital video broadcasting. Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (FB-MC) waveforms which exhibit advantageous spectral properties have been proposed to facilitate coexistence with incumbent systems. In this demonstration, we show that, despite the enhanced spectral localization of FB-MC waveforms, they do not significantly facilitate coexistence with incumbent systems if the latter are based on OFDM.

Indeed, most studies demonstrating the advantages of FB-MC over OFDM in cognitive radio setups have so far assumed that both the secondary and incumbent systems would be using FB-MC. Nevertheless, it is likely that at least in a first step, incumbent devices – typically mobile handsets – will still be based on OFDM. Therefore, there is a need to properly investigate the coexistence between FB-MC cognitive devices and OFDM incumbent systems. The demonstrator we propose enables users to measure the interference created on each subcarrier of the OFDM incumbent according to the waveform used by the secondary which can be set to use either OFDM or different types of FB-MC waveforms. The presented results will demonstrate that using FB-MC for the secondary transmission does not significantly reduce interference to the OFDM incumbent.

For more information about this demo, you can watch this video:

You can also read the following article published in IEEE Access:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7968391/