Waveform contenders for 5G — OFDM vs. FBMC vs. UFMC

In this paper we review the waveform design of 4G (based on OFDM) and motivate the need for a redesign for 5G. Both the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) and the move to user-centric processing are rendering OFDM unfeasible. With FBMC a potential contender has been promoted in recent years. Though FBMC is better suited than OFDM in theory, practical considerations pinpoint many issues of FBMC. Therefore, we have designed a new waveform called Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC) collecting the advantages FBMC is promising while avoiding its drawbacks. In contrast to FBMC, UFMC applies a filtering functionality per sub-band instead of per subcarrier.