Coded Performance of OFDM and SC PHY of IEEE 802.15.3c for Different FEC Types

In order to realize wireless gigabit transmission in one room, different 60 GHz systems are emerging. For the physical layer (PHY) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) as well as single carrier (SC) transmission are deployed. In this paper, the fundamental studies of coded performance of both approaches are extended by comparing different forward error correction (FEC) schemes for the final version of IEEE 802.15.3c in terms of bit error rate (BER) versus E_b/N₀. Our results show that the SC PHY outperforms the OFDM PHY not only for high code rates but also for low code rates when using moderate low density parity check (LDPC) codes. Thus, very efficient, low cost 60 GHz devices can be designed.