A single-carrier/OFDM comparison for broadband wireless communication

OFDM is a popular modulation scheme for broadband wireless communication. It elegantly handles multipath and has low complexity. Recently, single-carrier with frequency-domain processing (SC-FD) is gaining attention as a possible competitor for OFDM. It is based on the same principles and, therefore, it has similar multipath handling capabilities and low complexity. Moreover, SC-FD promises several other attractive advantages, such as power amplifier efficiency and inherent frequency diversity exploitation. Current performance comparisons do not consider these effects combined. We make the comparison in a realistic scenario considering both the power amplifier efficiency and frequency diversity. Our results show that, in a multipath environment, SC-FD can outperform OFDM by 4 dB, largely due to the better frequency diversity exploitation. Therefore, SC-FD is a good alternative to OFDM for battery-powered terminals, and is therefore especially suited for uplink communication.