Error Rate Performance of Potential Multicarrier Waveforms and Coding Techniques for 5G

Background: The wisdom of future wireless communication is clearly highlighted by the gigabit experience, low latency and the three fold rises in the capacity, compared to the 4th Generation networks. To meet such an ambitious objective of the 5th Generation communication systems, efficient use of non-contiguous unused spectrum is required. The panacea to this issue lies in the symbiosis of multicarrier waveforms and coding schemes. Methods: To study the interaction between these two, several multicarrier waveforms like Filtered- OFDM (F-OFDM), Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC) and Weighted Overlap and Add (WOLA) which act as a powerful contender to win the 5G candidate waveform race, are analyzed in Low-Density Parity Check Codes (LDPC), Polar and Turbo coded representative Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) channel models under a common numerology framework. This article dwells upon the error rate and throughput performance of different modulation formats and coding schemes appropriate for the 5G in a well-defined multi-cellular environment. Results and Conclusion: The results have shown that even though many waveforms and coding techniques may pave the route towards its adoption as a physical layer standard instead of classical OFDM and convolution codes but no one is a clear conqueror as their selection depends upon the considered environment and type of traffic.