A potential technology enabler of next generation radio systems

Multicarrier modulations considered for 5G include filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (fOFDM), filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) and cyclic convolution based FBMC. In these modulations, to achieve better spectral containment compared to conventional OFDM, individual or groups of subcarriers are combined and shaped with a filter. This increases the computational complexity compared to OFDM. In this contribution, a comparison of this complexity is evaluated for these different modulation schemes. In addition to the complexity analysis, the suitability of FBMC for specific 5G usecases is also demonstrated in this work via two experimental implementations. Both use-cases aim at exploiting the unused fragmented spectrum in bands below 1 GHz. FBMC exploits efficiently the underutilized fragmented spectrum while guaranteeing superior interference protection to coexisting primary transmissions. These key characteristics can satisfy critical requirements existing 4G and future 5G systems. Keywords—multi-carrier modulations, 5G, fragmented spectrum; efficient-agile waveforms