Generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) as a nonorthogonal waveform aims at diverse applications in future mobile networks. To evaluate its performance, its capacity limits are of particular importance. Therefore, this paper analyzes its constellation-constrained capacities for cases where the channel state information (CSI) is unknown at the transmitter and perfectly known at the receiver. In frequency selective channels, GFDM may provide advantage over the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme. In order to achieve near-capacity performance, the interaction of data symbols in time and frequency combined with multiple antennas (MIMO) challenges the design of GFDM receivers. This paper, therefore, applies expectation propagation (EP) for systematic receiver design. It is shown that the resulting iterative MIMO-GFDM receiver with affordable complexity can approach optimum decoding performance and outperform MIMO-OFDM in a rich multipath environment. Simulations are also used to illustrate the impact of channel delay spread on the constellation-constrained capacities and on the performance of the novel receiver algorithm.

Innovative 5G applications will challenge future cellular systems with new requirements. The OFDM based 4G standard will not be able to address all of them. Generalized frequency division multiplexing is a flexible multicarrier waveform with additional degrees of freedom. This paper presents a strategy towards a flexible FPGA implementation of GFDM, which is reconfigurable at run-time.

This paper presents a solution for achieving transmit diversity with generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM). Compared to previous works, the proposed solution significantly improves symbol error rate (SER) performance and latency, where both aspects are crucial for future 5G cellular networks. It is shown that widely linear estimation at the receiver side can jointly equalize and demodulate the space-time encoded GFDM signal. Moreover, maximum ratio combining can further increase the SER performance with multiple receive antennas. SER performance is evaluated in Rayleigh fading multipath channels.

Existing non data-aided synchronization schemes for OFDM in particular exploit the redundancy implemented by the CP to perform a time and frequency offset estimation. In general this is more challenging to exploit in non-orthogonal multicarrier systems. This paper gives a short insight of the impact of frequency offset of the performance of the non-orthogonal scheme GFDM and proposes a new estimator for it, which makes use of the data repetition implemented by the sidelobes of the prototype filter and is not feasible in OFDM. It allows a coarse CFO estimation in a wide range, even in a tough multipath environment, which can be improved by using a larger number of data.

Cellular systems of the fourth generation (4G) have been optimized to provide high data rates and reliable coverage to mobile users. Cellular systems of the next generation will face more diverse application requirements: the demand for higher data rates exceeds 4G capabilities; battery-driven communication sensors need ultra-low power consumption; and control applications require very short response times. We envision a unified physical layer waveform, referred to as generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), to address these requirements. In this paper, we analyze the main characteristics of the proposed waveform and highlight relevant features. After introducing the principles of GFDM, this paper contributes to the following areas: 1) the means for engineering the waveform's spectral properties; 2) analytical analysis of symbol error performance over different channel models; 3) concepts for MIMO-GFDM to achieve diversity; 4) preamble-based synchronization that preserves the excellent spectral properties of the waveform; 5) bit error rate performance for channel coded GFDM transmission using iterative receivers; 6) relevant application scenarios and suitable GFDM parameterizations; and 7) GFDM proof-of-concept and implementation aspects of the prototype using hardware platforms available today. In summary, the flexible nature of GFDM makes this waveform a suitable candidate for future 5G networks.

Generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) is a multi-carrier modulation scheme. In contrast to the traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), it can benefit from transmitting multiple symbols per sub-carrier. GFDM targets block based transmission which is enabled by circular pulse shaping of the individual sub- carriers. In this paper we propose a low complexity design for demodulating GFDM signals based on a sparse representation of the pulse-shaping filter in frequency domain. The proposed scheme is compared to receiver concepts from previous work and the performance is assessed in terms of bit error rates for AWGN and Rayleigh multipath fading channels. The results show, that for high-order QAM signaling, the error performance can be significantly improved with interference cancellation at reasonable computational cost.

LTE and LTE-Advanced have been optimized to deliver high bandwidth pipes to wireless users. The transport mechanisms have been tailored to maximize single cell performance by enforcing strict synchronism and orthogonality within a single cell and within a single contiguous frequency band. Various emerging trends reveal major shortcomings of those design criteria: (1) The fraction of machine-type-communications (MTC) is growing fast. Transmissions of this kind are suffering from the bulky procedures necessary to ensure strict synchronism. (2) Collaborative schemes have been introduced to boost capacity and coverage (CoMP), and wireless networks are becoming more and more heterogeneous following the non-uniform distribution of users. Tremendous efforts must be spent to collect the gains and to manage such systems under the premise of strict synchronism and orthogonality. (3) The advent of the Digital Agenda and the introduction of carrier aggregation are forcing the transmission systems to deal with fragmented spectrum. 5GNOW will question the design targets of LTE and LTE-Advanced having these shortcomings in mind. The obedience of LTE and LTE-Advanced to strict synchronism and orthogonality will be challenged. It will develop new PHY and MAC layer concepts being better suited to meet the upcoming needs with respect to service variety and heterogeneous transmission setups. A demonstrator will be built as Proof-of-Concept relying upon continuously growing capabilities of silicon based processing. Wireless transmission networks following the outcomes of 5GNOW will be better suited to meet the manifoldness of services, device classes and transmission setups being present in envisioned future scenarios like smart cities. The integration of systems relying heavily on MTC, e.g. sensor networks, into the communication network will be eased. The per-user experience will be more uniform and satisfying. To ensure this 5GNOW will contribute to upcoming 5G standardization.

Generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) is a new digital multicarrier concept. The GFDM modulation technique is extremely attractive for applications in a fragmented spectrum, as it provides the flexibility to choose a pulse shape and thus allows reduction of the out-of-band leakage of opportunistic cognitive radio signals into incumbent frequency space. However, this degree of freedom is obtained at the cost of loss of subcarrier orthogonality, which leads to self-inter-carrier-interference. This paper will explain how self-interference can be reduced by a basic and a double-sided serial interference cancellation technique and show that these interference cancellation techniques improve the GFDM bit error rate to match the theoretical performance of the well studied orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM).

Generalized frequency division multiplexing is a non-orthogonal, digital multicarrier transmission scheme with attractive features that address the requirements of emerging applications of wireless communications systems in areas like cognitive radio and machine-to-machine communication. In this paper, first a linear system description is obtained for the transmitter by ordering data in a time-frequency block structure and representing the processing steps upconversion, pulse shaping and upsampling as matrix operations. Based on the transmitter, three standard ways of detecting the signal are derived and compared in terms of bit error performance in AWGN and Rayleigh multipath fading channels.