OFDM System Performance, Variability and Optimality With Design Imperfections and Channel Impediments

An important indicator commonly used to evaluate the quality of a communication link is signal-to-interference ratio (SIR). However, studies in the literature dealing with SIR for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems are relatively few. This paper analytically investigates OFDM system performance by including major channel impairments such as excess delay spread, synchronization error, sample timing error, frequency offset, and time-varying fading. We derive a closed-form expression for SIR, accounting for both variations of inter-carrier interference (ICI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) with the number of subcarriers, and the susceptibility to channel impairments. A condition relating peak ISI to peak ICI is derived. An expression quantifying the impact of synchronization error in ISI is obtained. SIR behavior with respect to the tradeoff among numbers of subcarriers and other system parameters are investigated. A numerical method, as well as a polynomial equation for an analytical solution, is formulated to find the optimal number of subcarriers for a given set of constraints. We demonstrate the variations of SIR with various parameters and analyze the leakage of power (unwanted power distribution across subcarriers).