Computational complexity analysis of advanced physical layers based on multicarrier modulation

In this contribution we thoroughly analyze the computational effort necessary to implement a multicarrier based physical layer for wireless communications. We consider two variations of this modulation concept, namely traditional cyclic pre-x based orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) and lter bank based multicarrier (FBMC) systems. First, we give the analytical formulas for the computational complexity of both systems by taking into account the turbo channel decoding and the multicarrier modulation, demodulation and equalization. Based on the specications of WiMAX, we present a numerical comparison between both systems, where they occupy the same bandwidth and possess the same throughput. From the examples, we can conclude that, for a certain bit error ratio, the two alternatives present a similar computational complexity, but CP-OFDM still has to deploy 1.7 dB more energy per information bit than FBMC in order to achieve the same performance.