The Performance of Overlap PCC-OFDM with Error-Correcting Codes

Polynomial cancellation coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with overlapping symbol periods (Overlap PCC-OFDM) is a modulation technique that is less sensitive to frequency errors and more robust against multipath distortion than OFDM. A cyclic prefix is no longer needed. However, fading is still a problem and will cause bit errors. Error propagation will occur as decision feedback equalizer is used. In previous studies this was not taken into account and perfect decisions were assumed. In Overlap PCC-OFDM because the equalizer output is a vector rather than a scalar, error correction can be performed across the vector before the decision is fed back. In this paper, we apply error-correcting codes across the subchannels to improve the symbol error rate (SER). Comparisons are made between the SER performance of Overlap PCC-OFDM and OFDM in frequency error and in a two-path channel with both employing Reed-Solomon (RS) codes. Results show that Overlap PCCOFDM outperforms OFDM.