~

592

IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 41, No. 3, AUGUST 1995

INFLUENCE OF RF OSCILLATORS ON AN OFDM SIGNAL

Claus Muschallik Thomson Multimedia Advanced RF-Lab VRF Corporate Research, Villingen, Germany

Abstract
This paper explains the mechanisms that lead to a f f degradation o an OFDMsignal because o the phase noise o the RF oscillators. An approach for easy f f calculation of SNR, independent o carrier numbers, f will be given. This SNR approach uses a plot o the phase noise power density for the calculation. The theoretical results lead to an improved synthesizer f concept. Values o SNR and BER will be given for the new synthesizer concept.

about the OFDM system and the DFT in chapter 4 and 5. Then in chapter 6 we have the tools to explain the effects of oscillator disturbances on OFDM which are divided into frequency deviation and phase noise. An approach to calculate SNR is given in chapter 7. Eventually in chapter 8 we make a practical calculation based on this approach.

2. Frontend for OFDM broadcasting

The Frontend is defined here as the "analog part" of the OFDM receiver, containing a Tuner, an IF amplifier, the I/Q demodulator and A/D converter (ADC). There are several frontend concepts for a digital transmission like direct conversion (without IF), single conversion (one IF) and double conversion (two IFS). Fig. 1 shows a single conversion frontend with analog I/Q demodulation.
Antenna

1. Introduction
For conventional analog TV Systems (like PAL, SECAM and NTSC) in the Consumer Electronics, the phase noise of the frontend oscillators does not represent a big problem. With the introduction of the OFDM system (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) [ 11, the significance of the phase noise problem increases very strongly. The main difference between OFDM and other digital modulation methods is that the OFDM signal consists of many low rate modulated carriers that are "filtered" from each other with a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The low symbol rate makes the synchronisation more difficult when fast phase disturbances occur. On the other hand, the phase noise leads to a non-orthogonality of the carriers because of leakage of the DFT. The effects of phase noise on the OFDM signal was not well known until now. It was even unknown whether a Consumer-like tuner could achieve the high performance which was needed. Purpose of this paper is to explain how the oscillator disturbances degrade the OFDM signal, to give values of SNR and BER calculated from a plot of phase-noise power density and to show the feasibility of a frontend that may manage an 8K OFDM system with a 64 QAM carrier modulation. Chapter 2 describes the used frontend concept. In chapter 3 several concepts about phase noise and PLL are revised. It follows an overview

\f

Tuner

IF Amplifier

Phase Comparator

Synthesizer
vcxo

E+ j

10 Bit A/D Converter

Fig. I Frontend for OFDM

The Tuner receives the RF modulated signal from the antenna. A terrestrial transmission uses a frequency that goes up to 850 MHz, the signal level normally lies under 80 dBpV. The tuner amplifies and roughly filters the RF signal, before converting it to the IF range. The frequency conversion succeeds with a mixer and a Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO),

Manuscript received June 12, 1995

0098 3063195 $04.00

1995 IEEE

Muschallik: Influence of R F Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

593

which is part of a frequency synthesizer system. This VCO is a very important element of the Tuner. The VCO causes the main contribution of phase noise and frequency deviation in the whole frontend because it operates at very high frequencies. All disturbances of the VCO are imposed upon the signal; this fact demands a high purity of this oscillator. We use a frequency synthesizer to improve the oscillator stability. The IF-amplifier filters the adjacent channels with a SAW filter after amplifying the signal. The next stage is the UQ demodulator, which delivers a complex baseband signal in the in-phase component I and the Quadrature component Q; base band filtering follows. The AID conversion is performed by a 10 Bit ADC which samples with a clock signal provided by the Digital Signal Processing (DSP). The Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) information is only able to compensate relatively low frequency-disturbances. Thus the target of a good frontend design is to achieve high VCO purity to prevent extensive corrections by the DSP.

only be used with a QPSK and 1K carriers. Even in this case, proper measures have been taken to maintain a low signal degradation. An improvement of oscillator phase noise and the knowledge of their influences on the OFDM system was then necessary. Now we want to remind you of some facts about phase noise before discussing its influences on the OFDM signal. In the time domain, the oscillator signal U,,, can be characterized by
U,,'(t> =

&,' .e /[2n( f , + / , i ) / l e /a(/)+ U ,

(1)

The frequency deviation fd has to be considered as time invariant or slowly changing. U,. considers the additive white noise. The phase noise is caused by o ( t ) ,which is a time variant phase disturbance in [rad]. For small angles, the approximation u ( ~ , ~ ( , , , =( l + j o ( t ) . when o ( t )<< 1 ) [)
(2)

3. Oscillator Phase Noise

The origin of phase noise is well known and several papers give a good overview about this concern [ 2 ] . In the TV-Consumer Electronics the phase noise was not really a critical point for the tuner. The performance of the VCO, working on a frequency range between 45 MHz and 950 MHz, was mainly influenced by the poor Quality Q of the LC-resonator. The oscillator circuit was often realized with a single transistor. The phase noise behavior improved later with the introduction of mixer ICs with integrated oscillators. Due to the wide frequency range of the VCO, the tuning steepness has a value of several MHz/V. The VCO gain factor K , characterises this steepness. Spurious signals added to the tuning voltage cause an undesired angle modulation when the VCO runs free. A frequency synthesizer based on a Phase Locked Loop (PLL) improves the long term stability of the VCO. The synthesizer concepts were focused on a small frequency resolution of e.g. 62.5 kHz allowing the fine tuning. This fine tuning was necessary because of the drift of the nyquist slope in the SAW filter. The small frequency resolution led to a low reference frequency of 7.125 kHz in the phase detector and thus to a narrow loop bandwidth of about 100 Hz. First trials with these conventional tuners in an OFDM system showed very soon that they could

is valid. uosz(Lp) is the lowpass representation of the noisy oscillator. This approximation has a good accuracy for the OFDM system we want to analyse. uosz(Lp) can be represented as a phasor with the length one, changing its angle o ( t ) with the time. The angle modulation like PM or FM is non-linear. Using the approximation in (2) we linearize the angle modulation to a narrow band modulation and its spectrum becomes very similar to the spectrum for an AM signal. In both cases the spectral amplitude is symmetrical to the carrier frequency. The difference exists in the phase of the sidebands: for the AM the added sidebands lie parallel to the carrier. for the angle modulation the added sidebands lie perpendicular to the carrier, causing only a phase distortion instead of an amplitude distortion. After linearising the angle modulation we may obtain the Spectral Noise Density S, ( f ) of the noisy oscillator directly from the Fourier Transform of o(t ) with ( 31 A common way to represent the oscillator quality is the plot of the phase noise density depending on the offset frequency F. The phase noise density is plotted along the offset frequency in double logarithmic coordinates. The amplitude is given in dBc/Hz and means the power noise density in 1 Hz bandwidth related to the total carrier power. Fig. 2 shows the phase noise density plot of a conventional tuner used in PAL / SECAM / NTSC TV systems.

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. Vol. 41. No. 3, AUGUST 1995

S P O T FRQ

1.00 k H 2

with the transfer function F@); p is the Laplace operator. The resulting signal controls the VCO which have a gain factor KO. In order to judge the improvement of the phase noise behavior through a PLL system its transfer function can be used. The transfer function of a PLL second order is

H,. ( p ) =

0,. (
~

P)P2 O J P ) P Z + 2 P j O , , +W,,

(4)

with K,, . K,, >> 1. 6 is the loop damping ratio and J;, = a,,2.n the loop bandwidth of the PLL, with /

13i
H Z

F3CM

FREQLENCY CFFSET 36 1 2 MHZ CGRHIER

3
M +I Z

Fig. 2 Phase noise plot of a conventional tuner

The disadvantage of characterising the quality of an oscillator with its phase noise plot is that it only shows the magnitude of the noise and not its phase information. In other words, it is not possible to know for sure if the noise causes only an angle disturbance or also an amplitude disturbance. However in most cases this kind of coloured noise causes only an angle disturbance, and in this paper this fact will be assumed. In the frontend, the PLL tunes the VCO to the required frequency and improves its long-term stability and phase noise. For a free-running oscillator the phase noise increases with decreasing offsetfrequency following a high law inverse function (&-' to f,-$). A PLL system compensates for the lower frequency part of the phase noise. Thus the phase noise behavior can be improved by changing the PLL design. Fig. 3 shows a PLL synthesizer concept.
reference phase detector IowDass

The PLL compensates for the phase noise which is covered by the loop bandwidth, in a measure given by the transfer function. Fig. 4 shows the transfer function for a second order PLL.
IO
H,tW
0
J

---

10
/

20

/
-3 0
/
/

/
,
lo"
_ I - -

-40

10

fifn

Id

Fig. 4 Transferfiinctron o. second order PLL wlth f 6 =05

A
0 in ,

The loop damping ratio influences the dynamic behavior of the PLL and the overshoot of the transfer function. Values of between 0.5 and 1 are optimal for best noise and dynamic behavior. The total phase noise density of a VCO + PLL system So,is given by

<

<

frequency divider

vco

Fig. 3 PLL Synthesizer

sa, sa, + sa, .n2 + so,, = H,

*

(7)

The incoming phase CY? of the VCO is compared in a phase detector after division by n with the reference phase o r . The phase detector has a gain KO. The phase detector signal passes through a lowpass filter

in Fig. 5, whereby So,is the noise power density of the VCO, So,, the noise power density of the reference XCO and Sa,, an additional noise power density in the PLL because of other noise sources.

Muschallik: Influence of RF Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

595

LJu,d.ll

quarzreference and divide1

Fig. 5 Phase Noise of a VCO and PLL-System

Taking a look at Fig. 5 one would tend to increase the PLL loop bandwidth at very high values. A PLL dilemma is that the wider the PLL bandwidth, the more low noise can be compensated for, but also the more noise enters the loop and disturbs the PLL system. Thus it is very important to note that the PLL in the tuner is used for frequency synthesis and not for carrier recovery. In a frequency synthesizer a high purity and high level reference signal (XCO) is available and the loop bandwidth can be made very wide. In our frontend we increased the loop bandwidth to a value of some 1 or 2 kHz in order to improve the phase noise behavior. Fig. 6 shows the phase noise plot for the improved synthesizer concept. Choosing a PLL loop bandwidth of 1 kHz held the phase noise below this frequency constant at a value of -70 dBc/Hz.

modulated with a high data rate, occupying a bandwidth of e.g. 8 MHz. A disadvantage of a single carrier modulated signal is that channel distortions have to be avoided inside this bandwidth. The terrestrial transmission is characterized by strong amplitude / phase distortions and echoes. Channel distortions can be managed much better by an OFDM signal and its modulation effectivity in Bit/sec/Hz is the same compared with a single carrier modulation. The OFDM signal is composed of many low-rate modulated carriers, transmitted in frequency multiplex. Actually a Number of Carriers N of 2048 or 8192 will be chosen for the digital TV transmission. The modulation of each carrier may be the same as for the single carrier system e.g. 64 QAM. The OFDM signal in the time domain uoFDM(t)can be written as

k=l

where Ak represents the multiplexed data (depending on the kind of modulation) of the i-th symbol in the kcarrier, Ts is the Symbol length and fk the frequency of the k-carrier. The separation between all carriers is defined byf,=l/T,. Due to the addition of stochastical modulated carriers with different frequency, the OFDM signal looks very similar like a noise signal, as shown in Fig. 7.

I
I

10 HL

FROM

FREQUENCY O F F S E T 36.00 M H Z C A R R I E R

1
MHL

Time
Fig. 7 OFDM signal in the time domain

Fig. 6 Phase-Noise Plot of improved VCO and PLLSystem

4. The OFDM Signal

For a digital TV transmission a single carrier modulation has been considered. The carrier will be

Signal-peaks with a very high amplitude may occur, causing trouble with the linearity of amplifier stages. For that reason these spikes will be "clipped" in the transmitter, choosing a ratio of some 10 dB between peak- and effective amplitude. The insensitivity to

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. Vol. 41. No. 3, AUGUST 1995

echoes of the OFDM signal will be achieved with the introduction of a "Guard Interval". The latter is a periodical repetition of a piece of the OFDM symbol. In presence of multipaths the OFDM signal can cancel the influence of the echoes if the delay of all incoming signals is shorter than the duration of the Guard Interval. In the frequency domain, the OFDM signals have the properties of band-limited Gaussian noise, as shown in Fig. 8.
9BdBuV
800 O M Y Z

20MHz

/
W

The addition of the modulated carriers forms the baseband signal, which is then transposed into the RF range. After passing the transmission channel, the OFDM signal is received through the frontend, to be mixed again to a baseband signal. Afterwards each carrier is filtered from each other with N filters with the same shaping but different center frequencies. After mixing each filtered carrier the original data is available. In the proposal in [ 11 the mixers and filters will be performed by a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) or its Inverse Transform (IFFT). In order to better understand how oscillators may degrade the OFDM signal an overview about DFT is necessary.

5. Discrete Fourier Transform DFT

The DFT will be defined with
N-I
C VF 100Hz
-

/bl-

2n

X ( n )= C x ( k ) . e
k=O

(9)

ST 0 5 s /

A T T 10dB

Fig. 8 OFDM signal in the frequency domain

The signal power density is practically constant over the whole occupied bandwidth, thus the OFDM system is very frequency-efficient. The OFDM modulator and demodulator is shown in Fig. 9. In the modulator the multiplexed complex data Al,k modulates N carriers needing also N mixers.
~~

whereby x(k) is a sampled signal in the time domain and N the length of the DFT. The transformed signal X(n) may be interpreted as the spectrum of x(k), although there is a difference to the "real" Fourier Transform. Let's see this difference with the help of the complex exponential function x(k)

e,,

--+

P'
BasebandSignal

f,

RFSi@

channe4."
b
# '

'

IFFT
Fig. 9 Modulator and demodulator for OFDM

FFT

Muschallik: Influence of RF Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

597

x ( k ) = e j2nfhk7
with the frequencyfh. The sample time is T. Since an OFDM signal represents the addition of many complex exponential functions, the obtained results can also be used for better understanding of OFDM signals. The DFT of the complex exponential function is
/n(fhm-n)N N-l

m=n is shown in Fig. 10. The behavior of the DFT frequency response causes the leakage which makes the difference between the spectrum of the DFT and a "reall' Fourier Transform (FT) as shown in Fig. 11. Without leakage (a=O)the spectrum of a complex exponential function looks like its FT. The leakage ( a f 0) causes new frequencies that did not really exist in the given signal.
I " ' "

sin[n(f,TN

-n)]

X ( n )= e
with

sin -((fhTN-n)

(11)
(12)
Fig. 11 DFT of a complex exponential function without leakage a = 0 (le$) and with leakage a = 0.3 (right)

f, T N = m + a = F

m 2,

F is the norm frequency, m is a discrete frequency value and a is the relative frequency deviation (more in Chapter 6 ) . Equation (1 1) consists of phase and an amplitude information. Since X(n) is the response to a sine wave, it can be considered as the system response of the DFT. The magnitude

Nevertheless the total power of the signal calculated with

N-1

remains constant with or without leakage, being equal to one in our example of Fig. 1 1 . We conclude with

- Plato = const =
can also be considered as the frequency response of the DFT.
14

that the DFT is a linear transform for which the theorem of energy conservation is valid.

6. The non-ideal oscillator in an OFDM chain

The influence of a non-ideal oscillator on an OFDM transmission is shown in Fig. 12. After mixing the ideal OFDM signal with a noisy oscillator all OFDM carriers adopt the same phase and frequency disturbances. It will be said that an OFDM signal is more sensitive to phase disturbances than a single carrier system. The phase and frequency disturbances also affect a single carrier transmission, but an important difference between OFDM and single carrier is the symbol rate. In the demodulator, phase disturbances lower than symbol rate are expected to be detected and compensated by the carrier recovery algorithm. The symbol rate of OFDM is N-times lower than thesymbol rate of a single carrier system. Therefore the single carrier systems can compensate better for the phase noise than the OFDM system. Thus we have to achieve a higher VCO phase purity for the OFDM

I ]

i i
,

Fig. 10 Frequency response of a single filter of the DFT filter bank for N = 16 and m=n

Speaking about a frequency response one often thinks of a filter. In fact, the DFT acts like a filter bank, filtering all carriers from each other as shown in Fig. 9. The frequency response of a filter for N = 16 and

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 41, No. 3, AUGUST 1995

systems. The oscillator disturbances will be separated in frequency deviation fd and phase noise.
,s

OFDMsignal

,s

noisy oscillator

2) A disturbance component of all other carriers up to the n-th carrier, called here "Foreign Contribution" FC

,s

* ss oz

OFDM signal after mixer

Fig. 12 Disturbance of an OFDM signal thiough a noisy oscillator

6.1 Influence of a Frequency Deviation

The Frequency Deviation fd is supposed to be static or changing very slowly. It can be considered through the relative frequency deviation a

caused by DFT leakage (Inter Carrier Interference IC]). The addition of the complex magnitudes in (1 9) the FC, can achieve very high levels depending on the phase relationship of all carriers. Normally the amplitude and phase of each OFDM carrier may adopt only few discrete values (64 for a 64 QAM) or states. Nevertheless the OFDM signal is formed by the addition of many carriers which are stochastically modulated by such states. Therefore and according to the central limit theorem the real part and the imaginary part of the FC amplitude is normally distributed. The Gaussian distribution will be better approximated if more values and carriers N are allowed. Therefore the FC causes a disturbance that looks like white noise. The total power of the OC and the FC over all carriers ~ are COC and NFC. The C C )may be calculated with

If we consider only a frequency deviation and no noise, the DFT of the OFDM signal is

X(n),,,,,

c
'-11
m=O

jn(m-n+a)v

A,

sin[n(m- n + a ] sin - ( m - n + a ) N
7c

(17)

--.A* sin2(.na) N sin2(.nalN)

whereby the mean amplitude over all carriers is A . The computation of FNC may be easily made with the conclusion of chapter 6. Since the total power does not change with or without leakage, the addition of OC and FC must be equal to the total signal power without leakage. Thus it follows

In presence of a frequency deviation, the DFT leaks and the OFDM carriers loose their orthogonality. One carrier "sees" all others more or less depending how strong the frequency deviation is. The magnitude in Eq. (1 7) has two components:
1) A useful component or "Own Contribution" OC of the n-th carrier

N,,

A N--.

A * sin2(.na) N sin'(7calN)

A Tarrier to Noise ratio" C/N can then be calculated with

which contains the carrier information originally modulated in the transmitter. In Fig. 1 1 the OC is n=5.

Muschallik: Influence of RF Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

599

I I I I I
I

I I I I
I

I I I
I

l l , I I
I

1 I

Jo!
I

I I
I

I
I I

I I
I

1
-2 0

l 1 I l I I 1

I I 1 1 1 1 1

1 0 '

I' O

1' 6

Fig. 13 C/N caused by Foreign ContributionFC depending on relative frequency deviation a = f 1 f, ,

and will be plotted on Fig. 13. Example: an OFDM signal with fc = 1 kHz and fd = 10 Hz, has a C/N of some 35 dB caused by FC. Up to now we have not taken the phase information in Eq. (17) into consideration. For the OC the deviation of the carrier phase is

]"[,$I

for N >> 1. Thus a C/N because of common rotation of all OC can be approximated to

-20log(an)
is shown in

for N >> 1 and a << 1, the plot of C '/

Fig. 14.

For the latter example an angle of some 1.Soresults in a SNR of some 30 dB. It shows that the failure produced by phase rotation of OC is even bigger than the failure produced by FC. Nevertheless the failure produced by phase rotation can be easily detected and compensated because all carriers rotate in the same direction. Fig. 15 shows the effect of a frequency deviation. Fig. 15 (left) shows the deviation of carrier phase in [rad], Fig. 15 (right) shows the constellation of a 2K OFDM signal modulated with a 16 QAM. The FC produces the Gaussian-like noise, while the phase deviation of the OC causes the common rotation of all constellation points. The phase deviation i n (23) is valid when a sudden frequency deviation occurs. When the frequency deviation is constant, the phase rotates with 2 n a [rad] per symbol if a coherent demodulation is used. After a few symbols the constellation points rotate and the
16 QAM, 2048 Carrier

angle [rad1

0.3
0.25

0.2

0.15
0.1

0.05

0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

-1.5 -1.5

t/Ts
Fig. 15 Phase disturbance cfd
= cons.)

-1
-0.5

A 0.5 1 1.5

in the time domain (le#) and its constellation (right)

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. Vol. 41. No. 3. AUGUST 1995

slicer detects failures. A differential demodulation, which only compares the phase difference between two symbols, tolerates the effect of the constant frequency deviation. The total C/N because of frequency deviation has to be calculated separately depending on the modulation type.

6.2 Influence of Phase Noise

Until now the spectrum of the OFDM signal presents only discrete components. Now the disturbance of the OFDM signal caused by oscillator phase noise will be taken into account. The disturbed OFDM signal adopts the continuous power density behavior of the noisy oscillator. Therefore the sum in (17) will be replaced by an integral. The DFT magnitude of the noisy OFDM signal is

may be approximated for low offset frequencies F and N > > 1 by a [sin(27ra)/(2xa)/? function. Fig. 16 shows the frequency response of the DFT weighting function in double logarithmic coordinates. We will study the behavior of the DFT computing a noisy oscillator before we apply the results obtained to the OFDM signal. The way that the DFT computes discrete spectral values from the continuous spectrum of the m-th noisy carrier is shown in Fig. 17.

t S(F)

neerm,

Rn

R n,

F
Phese N o i s Power Density

I:

,x(n), z

of m-m Carrier

(25)

whereby F is the continuous frequency and S,,,,, is the spectral density power of the m-th noisy carrier. The frequencies f i and f 2 represent the limits of the spectral band used by the whole OFDM signal. Eq. (25) tends to Eq. (1 7) replacing the oscillator power density with a Dirac distribution with S,,,,, ( F ) = 6 ( m+ a ) and thus represents the general case

Fig. I7 DFT of the m-th noisy currier causing the Own Noise Contribution ONC ( N d and the Foreign Noise Contribution FNC (NF)

The discrete noise components in the Fig. 17 (below) are obtained after integrating the noise power density enclosed under each weighting function. The useful part of the m-th carrier in Fig. I7 is C,. The spectral components S, of the phase noise produce leakage of the DFT. After the DFT two kind of discrete noise components have been created:
1) A noisy component No which disturbs its own carrier, also called Own Noise Contribution (ONC). The ONC of the n-th carrier may be calculated with
I

-101

\-

-20

l2

-30

40

1u

1 8

carrier distance a
Fig. 16 Frequency response o the DFT weighting f function

In Eq. (25) the phase noise density S, will be first weighted and then integrated. The weighting function corresponds to the DFT frequency response, which

(m = n). The ONC considers only the noise power of its own carrier. We remind you that all carriers have the same phase disturbance as the VCO after the mixer stage (s. Fig. 12). Therefore the ONC is identical for all carriers and causes a common rotation of all constellation points. This effect has been observed in [2] and called Common Phase

Muschallik: Influence of RF Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

60 1
1 6 Q m #)48Carrier
I

1.5

,
.

angle o 15
[rad]
0.1

Phase Disturbance
d4_-c 0T7 B ,
-80 -

Spectrum of Distortion

'

1
0.5

0.05

:25t

-01

-b, 0 1 0 2 0 3 0 4 0 5 0.6 0 7 0 8 0 9
~

0 -0.5

6.25
-0 3
,

0.35

-1 . -1.5

t ITS

-1.5

-1

-0.5

I 0 I

0.5

1.5

Fig. I8 Phase disturbance of a noisy oscillator (time and frequency domain) and its constellation of an OFDMsymbol

Error". The latter can be easily obtained and corrected and actually a Common Phase Error Correction" is planned to be used in the OFDM receiver. The common phase error changes from symbol to symbol and thus it must be calculated each time Ts anew. The common phase error can also be interpreted as a mean phase deviation during the symbol period Ts. The DFT calculates a phase mean because of its integral behavior.

We already mentioned that the common phase error can be eliminated by the common phase error correction. The calculation of the latter makes only sense if the common phase error is equal or bigger than the Gaussian-like noise (ONC 2 FNC). Therefore it is useful to know the behavior of the integrated weighting function in Eq. (26). For this purpose the function

2) Several noisy components NF which disturb the neighbour carriers, are called Foreign Noise Contribution (FNC). The FNC which disturbs the n-th carrier may be calculated with

r I(~r)[dB]=lO.log

I*

can be used. It gives the relative failure that remains if we integrate the si2(xa)-function between f a instead foo and will be shown in Fig. 19.

(27) The FNCs have different magnitudes and phases, disturbing each carrier in an irregular way. The FNC will be originated by all carriers except its own carrier. Due to the fact that all carriers presents a stochastic phase modulation, the disturbance caused by the FNC is a Gaussian-like noise. The effects of the FNC and ONC has been explained in [3] and [4]. Fig. 18 shows the phase disturbance of a noisy oscillator and its consequence in the respective constellation for a single OFDM symbol. The rotation of the whole constellation (common phase error caused by ONC) and the stochastic disturbance of the constellation points (Gaussian-like noise caused by FNC) can be seen clearly.

Fig. 19 Plot offunction I ( a )

After only one carrier (a=1) more than 90% of the total power has been integrated. After 10 carriers the failure is only 1% and decreases with 20 dB per decade. Therefore if the main part of phase noise density is covered inside one carrier separation, then

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IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics, Vol. 4 I . No. 3, AUGUST 1995

the common phase error correction achieves a clear improvement. However if the phase noise density covers several carrier separations a common phase error correction could be saved. In the next step we want to obtain SNR values caused by phase noise in the OFDM system. Equations (26) and (27) are not very easy to handle. Therefore an approach to calculate SNR from a phase noise density plot shall now be made.

7. Approach for calculating SNR of the OFDM system from a phase noise plot
There are several ways to represent the quality of an oscillator. The most common is a plot of its phase noise density S,(f) [dBc/Hz] over the offset frequency as shown in Fig. 2 and 6. Such a plot can be easily obtained with a spectrum analyzer and will be used to calculate the SNR of an OFDM signal. First we calculate the total noise power of the noisy oscillator (VCO) integrating the phase noise density f 2 ] . The over the channel bandwidth considerations made in chapter 5 show that the total power remains constant before and after the DFT. The DFT "distributes" the total noise power over the OFDM carriers to form the ONC No and FNC N F as shown in Fig. 16. We define m =1 ...N and n = I ...N with m # n . The noise power of N OFDM carriers will be distributed in the ONC No,, the FNC and NI;nl,rl. is the ONC of the m-th carrier. N,,l,l,,l Non, is the FNC caused by one m-th carrier which disturbs all other n-th carriers. If all OFDM carriers have the same amplitude it follows: NI~.,l,.llNI..l,,lll. = Therefore the total noise power Nt that disturbs one carrier m is
I1

Note that Eq (31) does not depend of the carrier number N , the calculation is valid for an 8K or for a 1K OFDM signal. Eq. (31) is an approximation because all OFDM carriers may have different amplitudes. Nevertheless the mean SNR over all carriers tends to the same value. Another point is that several band edge carriers of the OFDM signal will not be used, they will be disconnected. Therefore the carriers on the band edge will be less disturbed than the carriers in the band center. This fact could be neglected if N >> 1 because the weighting function of the DFT considers mainly the phase noise covered inside one carrier separation (s. Fig. 19) and because the phase noise density also rapidly decreases with increasing offset frequency (e.g. for an 8K OFDM in an 8 MHz bandwidth the phase noise density reaches the noise floor in a distance of 100 carrier). The SNR value in (31) is a worst case approach because the ONC will be taken in to account. After the common phase error correction the ONC is eliminated and better SNR values should be achieved.

8. Practical calculation of SNR and BER

We will calculate the SNR and BER for the improved OFDM synthesizer concept. The OFDM carriers are modulated with a 64 QAM and the channel bandwidth is 8 MHz. The phase noise plot is shown in Fig. 6. It will be approximated by three straight lines as shown in Fig 20.

t
-70 dEdHz

vco + PLL
s1
-20 dB/Decade

I
S2'

s3
2 kHz

and equal to the total phase noise power of the oscillator

400 kHz

t (lW1

Fig. 20 Approachedphase noise density ofFig. 6

We obtain the straight line equation Therefore the SNR caused by phase noise can be approximated by

whereby a [dBc/Hz] is the intercept with the 1 Hz (0 dBHz) axis and b [dB/Decade] is the slope ofthe straight line. The three straight line equations are

Muschallik: Influence of RF Oscillators on an OFDM Signal

603

Sl[dB] = -7OdBc/Hz S2[dB]= -4 dBc/Hz - 20 dB/Decade .f[dBHz] S3[dB]= - 1 16 dBc/Hz which will be changed to linear coordinates with (33) to SI
=

demodulation of an 8 k OFDM signal modulated with a 64 QAM in an 8 MHz channel with acceptable degradation.

Acknowledgements
The underlying research work for this paper has been done in the frame work of the "DTVT and dTTb projects. The support of the EEC and BMFT is gratefully acknowledged. The author wishes to thank Prof. Dr. Ulrich Reimers, Director of the "Nachrichtentechnik Institut" T.U. Braunschweig, Dr. Hans Joachim Platte, General Manager Corporate Research, Dipl.-Ing. Veit Armbruster, Lab. Head advanced-RF as well as Dr. Dietrich Westerkamp, Program Manager TV of THOMSON multimedia, for their helpful suggestions and encouragement.

le-7;

S2 = le-0.25 .f2 and S3= le-11.6. The integration ranges in Hz are SI = [0 2e31; S2 = [2e3 4e51; S3 =: [4e5 4e61. The half total noise power is

References
L

2.10'

4.10'

=2-10-4+1.98-10-4 +9-10-6~ 4 - 1 0 - ~
and the total noise power is Nt = 8e-4. The noise power is related to the carrier which has a power equal to one. Therefore a SNR of some 31 dB will be obtained for the worst case approach. The OFDM system needs, before the Forward Error Correction (FEC), at least a SNR of some 25 dB (BER le-4 before FEC). With a SNR of 31 dB a BER before FEC better than le-6 can be achieved. Thus it may be expected that the improved synthesizer concept manages an 8K OFDM signal with 64 QAM carrier modulation.

1 1 S. B. Weinstein, P. M. Ebert, "Data transmission by 1 frequency division multiplexing using the discrete Fourier transform", IEEE Trans. on Com., 05. 1971.

[2] P. Robertson, S. Kaiser, "Proposal and Simulation Results for Feed-Forward Common Phase Error Correction and Feedback VCO", HDTV-T intemal report, 03.1994
1 1 J. H. Stott, "The Effects of Phase Noise in COFDM", 3 dTTb intemal report, 1 1.1994
[4] C. Muschallik, "Einfluf3 der Oszillatoren im Frontend auf ein OFDM-Signal", "Femseh- und Kinotechnik" (FKT), April 1995

Biography Claus Muschallik was born in Bogota, Colombia. He received the Engineer Degree from the Technical University of Munich 1989. Since his graduation he has been working with the Deusche Thomson Brandt in the RFLaboratories of Villingen, Corporate Research VRF. Actually he is envolved in the development of a Frontend for digital-TV used in the H D T V ~ and dTTb groups. Mr. Muschallik is an IEEEMember.

8. Conclusions
The degradation of an OFDM signal because of oscillator disturbances is caused by leakage of the DFT. There are two kinds of disturbances. The first one is the common phase error, produced by the Own Noise Contribution ONC, which rotates the whole constellation. The second one, produced by the Foreign Noise Contribution FNC, has a Gaussian-like noise behavior. The SNR that can be achieved in an OFDM system through a noisy VCO, can be roughly calculated by integrating its phase noise power density over the used channel bandwidth. AS an important conclusion of this paper it is possible to make the statement that the phase noise of an improved Consumer VCO + PLL system allows a