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A Comparative Study Between SC-FDMA and OFDMA Schemes for Satellite Uplinks
Vassilis Dalakas, Member, IEEE, P. Takis Mathiopoulos, Senior Member, IEEE, Filippo Di Cecca, and Gennaro Gallinaro

AbstractThis paper presents a detailed comparative study of two single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-FDMA) schemes, namely localized FDMA scheme (LFDMA) and interleaved FDMA scheme (IFDMA), versus orthogonal FDMA scheme (OFDMA), for a satellite uplink. The air-interface of the latter is based on the digital video broadcasting (DVB) family of standards. Considering two state-of-the-art high power ampliers (HPAs), operating in the K- and S-bands, the performance of synchronous and asynchronous LFDMA, IFDMA and OFDMA is evaluated in a multi-user environment. Systematic comparison results show that although for synchronous reception IFDMA outperforms the other two schemes, for asynchronous reception it is the most sensitive to degradation caused by inter-block interference (IBI). Furthermore, due to its relatively large envelope uctuations, OFDMA is the most sensitive scheme to non-linear distortion. Although for synchronous reception LFDMA shows only slightly inferior performance as compared to IFDMA, it outperforms the other two schemes for the asynchronous reception considered, especially for increased IBI distortion. Index TermsDigital video broadcasting via satellite, inter-block interference, orthogonal frequency-division multiple access, satellite uplink, single-carrier, total degradation.

I. INTRODUCTION N RECENT years, the increasing commercial demand for higher data rates has led to the utilization of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in several well known standards, including the 2nd generation of Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T2) [1], Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite Handheld (DVB-SH) [2] and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) [3]. The main technical advantage for such a choice is OFDMs robustness in the presence of frequency selective fading channels commonly encountered in wireless broadband communication systems [4]. However, OFDM technology has a major drawback, since it suffers from high peak-toaverage power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted signals [4, Chap.
Manuscript received May 16, 2010; revised January 31, 2012; accepted February 12, 2012. Date of publication May 11, 2012; date of current version August 17, 2012. This work was supported by ESA under Contract 21072/07/NL/AD. V. Dalakas is with the Network Operations Center, Harokopio University of Athens, 176 71 Athens, Greece (e-mail: vdalakas@hua.gr). P. T. Mathiopoulos is with the Institute for Space Applications and Remote Sensing, National Observatory of Athens, 15236 Penteli, Greece (e-mail: mathio@space.noa.gr). F. Di Cecca and G. Gallinaro are with Space Engineering, 00155 Rome, Italy (e-mail: gennaro.gallinaro@space.it; lippo.dicecca@space.it). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TBC.2012.2193494

6]. Such signals require linear power ampliers to avoid excessive signal distortion. Hence, the transmit power ampliers have to operate with a large input power back-off, (IBO), from their peak power which leads to poor power efciency [4, Chap. 6]. Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) is the multiple access scheme that naturally extends OFDM to simultaneously serve multiple users. Single-Carrier Frequency-Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) schemes are employed as alternative access schemes, which offer reduced PAPR as compared to OFDMAs high PAPR [5]. A signal with lower PAPR is desired, as it improves the power efciency of the employed non-linear amplier [6]. Although SC-FDMA utilize single-carrier modulation at the transmitter and frequency domain equalization at the receiver and typically achieve lower PAPR, they have similar transmitter structure and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance, as compared to an OFDMA system. The key difference in the transmitters of the two schemes is the presence of an additional discrete Fourier transform (DFT) in SC-FDMA. Thus, SC-FDMA is sometimes referred to as DFT-spread or DFT-precoded OFDMA [5]. Among the various SC-FDMA schemes, the most popular are: (i) Localized FDMA (LFDMA); and (ii) Interleaved FDMA (IFDMA) [5]. Because of its lower PAPR, a SC-FDMA scheme has been adopted for the uplink as the multiple access scheme in 3GPP [3]. Since 3GPP focuses on the Long Term Evolution (LTE) of UMTS (Universal Mobile Terrestrial Systems) radio access, it has led to a renewed interest for performance comparisons studies between SC-FDMA and OFDMA for terrestrial broadband communications systems. For example, a comparison study between SC-FDMA and OFDMA has conrmed that SC-FDMA has better PAPR performance in terms of its complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) [7]. The same study has also investigated the effects of pulse shaping on the PAPR performance of both access schemes. SC-FDMA schemes appear to have an additional advantage over OFDMA scheme since they offer increased spectrum efciency between different users [8]. In [9], it has been shown that LFDMA has higher throughput than the IFDMA. A turbo equalization technique that improved SC-FDMA performance over OFDMA has been presented in [10]. A performance analysis of OFDMA versus several variants of DFT-precoded OFDMA, as well as SC-FDMA in its time- and frequency-domain implementations, has been presented in [8] conrming the advantages of SC-FDMA in terms of performance and spectrum efciency, especially for frequency selective fading channels. More recent studies comparing the performance of OFDMA

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versus SC-FDMA have been published in [11] and [12]. In [11], a International Mobile TelecommunicationsAdvanced (IMT-A) system operating in a linear channel was considered, while more recently in [12] limited BER performance evaluation results have been presented using a soft-limiter as an approximation for non-linear channel. In general it appears that, while SC-FDMA is an attractive alternative to OFDMA access scheme, the PAPR advantage of SC-FDMA is mainly relevant for the uplink. For example, for the 3GPP, SC-FDMA has been adopted for its uplink, while OFDMA is used for its downlink [3]. It is important to underline that the previously mentioned studies have dealt exclusively with terrestrial 3GPP systems. Although OFDM techniques are established in terrestrial mobile networks they have not found up to now signicant use in space based communication systems. To the best of our knowledge, similar to terrestrial communications systems studies for state-of-the-art satellite based systems, such as the DVB family of standards (e.g., DVB-S2, DVB-SH), are not available in the open technical literature. An important difference of multiple access schemes for satellite based systems, which distinguish them from their terrestrial counterparts, is their inherent difculty in obtaining accurate synchronization between users [13, Chap. 6]. Although it may be common for terrestrial communication systems to assume ideal synchronization [5], for a satellite based system due to its long and varying signal propagation delays such assumption is not always easy to achieve. Erroneous synchronization will affect the orthogonality of the subcarriers, leading to signicant performance degradation due to the presence of Inter-Block Interference (IBI) between successive symbol blocks in a multi-user scenario [14]. It is therefore important to study the performance of such access schemes for satellite communication systems in the presence of synchronization error. Another difference is the High Power Amplier (HPA) used in satellite systems. As well known, HPAs used in satellite communication systems have highly non-linear transfer functions, including non-linear phase characteristics [13, Chap. 7]. Typically, this is not the case for the power ampliers employed in terrestrial communications systems where simplied models, such as the Rapp model [8] or the soft limiter [12] have been used. Motivated by the above, in this paper we consider the application of -FDMA1 schemes for state-of-the-art satellite multiuser systems. In particular, we present a thorough and detailed comparison study of -FDMA access scheme performances, for a satellite uplink operating in dual frequency bands (K- and S-Bands) in the presence of non-linear HPAs and synchronization error. The organization of this paper is as follows. After this introduction, the system model, together with a short overview of the -FDMA schemes, will be presented in Section II. Performance evaluation results can be found in Section III, where the multi-user performances with and without synchronization error are presented and compared. Concluding remarks can be found in Section IV.
the conciseness of the presentation, from now on and unless otherwise will be used as a common repstated, the notation -FDMA resentation of the three multiple access schemes considered in this work, i.e., LFDMA, IFDMA and OFDMA.
1For

II. SYSTEM MODEL The block diagram of the system model under consideration, as shown in Fig. 1, represents the uplink of a typical multi-user satellite communication system. It consists of users that may transmit simultaneously, each generating independent -FDMA signals, which after passing through a non-linear HPA, are transmitted through the channel. Corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) with single-sided power spectral density, , the signals arrive at the satellite, in the general case asynchronously, i.e., with different time offsets . Since both asynchronous, i.e., , and synchronous reception, i.e., , , will be considered, the time delay blocks shown in Fig. 1 are denoted as optional. As the multiple access scheme used for downlink is typically different from the access scheme employed for the uplink [15], the system model under consideration assumes that the user signals are demultiplexed and fully recovered at the satellite from the aggregated signal , observed with a common time interval using -FDMA receivers2. In the uplink, each user terminal multiplexes only its own signal before its HPA (one per user). This procedure is presented with details in next section, and the main difference from downlink is that at the satellite the users signals are multiplexed and amplied by a single HPA. Throughout this paper the following notations will be used. The -th symbol for the -th user is denoted with , while its corresponding vector is denoted with bold as . When only one user is referred, the index will be omitted. A. -FDMA

The detailed block diagram of the -FDMA signal generator representing its discrete baseband equivalent is illustrated in Fig. 2. It consists of a Turbo Encoder (TE), a Modulator (MOD), an -ary Discrete Fourier Transform ( -DFT), used only for SC-FDMA signal generation, a Sub-carrier Mapping (SM), an -ary Inverse DFT ( -IDFT) and a Cyclic Prex (CP) adder. The input to the TE are random and equally probable bits, , where they are encoded by a turbo code with rate, . The coded bits, , are modulated into the following time domain vector

where denotes transposition and the -th element, , is a complex symbol, which can be selected from a variety of modulation formats. Two of the most popular modulation formats, namely Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) and 16 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (16-QAM), will be considered in this paper. Further processing of will vary according to the specic access scheme used, as will be presented next. Firstly, for a SC-FDMA scheme, the use of a -point DFT is required, in order to produce a frequency domain vector (1)
2Although these receivers depend on the particular access scheme used, a generic receiver structure for all three access schemes considered in this paper will be presented in Section II-A.

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Fig. 1. Block diagram of the system under consideration.

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the -FDMA signal generator representing its discrete baseband equivalent.

with to Each of the -DFT outputs, , is then mapped to one of orthogonal sub-carriers (or tones) resulting in a new frequency vector

For the three access schemes by applying an -point IDFT , the -FDMA symbol block is formed as (2)

where only of its elements are non-zero. The sub-carrier mapping determines which part of the spectrum is used for transmission. On the one hand, for the LFDMA scheme, is zero padded to form a localized mapping, i.e.,

where is the -FDMA symbol block of time duration , is the DFT matrix operator and denotes Hermitian transposition of . As shown in Fig. 2, prior to transmission, a CP of length and duration is inserted per symbol block in order to provide guard time, which eliminates IBI between successive symbol blocks. Discarding this CP at the receiver, converts the linear convolution between the transmitted sequence and the channel impulse response into circular convolution, facilitating the equalization of the signal. The symbol block after CP addition can be conveniently expressed in matrix form as a vector (3) of length , where is the matrix resulting by the concatenation of the last rows of an identity matrix (denoted as ) with itself. The HPA output signal, , can be mathematically presented as (4) where denotes the HPA transfer functions presented by Fig. 4. In general, the signals from each user are corrupted by AWGN

On the other hand, for the IFDMA scheme, , is up-sampled to form a new vector with distributed mapping,

Secondly, for the OFDMA scheme, the -DFT shown in Fig. 2 is omitted, so that . As each user employs only of the available tones, the remaining tones are set to zero, e.g.,

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Fig. 3. Block diagram of the -FDMA receiver.

Fig. 4. AM/AM

and AM/PM

characteristics: (a) for the linearized

; (b) for

and arrive at the satellite with different time offsets denoted with . A straightforward generalization of the signal notation for users is presented in Fig. 1. The -FDMA signal arriving at the satellite can be expressed as (5) is identical to in the case of synchronous recepwhere tion. The more complex case of asynchronous reception is described in a following section. The block diagram of the generic -FDMA receiver is depicted in Fig. 3. It consists of a CP cutter, an -DFT, a Sub-carrier DeMapping (SDM), an -IDFT, used only for SC-FDMA, a Demodulator (DEMOD) and a Turbo Decoder (TDEC), leading to an estimation, , of the originally transmitted bits, . B. Non-Linear Amplication In this study two distinct HPAs operating in two different frequency bands are considered. The rst one, is a linearized HPA operating in the K-Band, which will be denoted as . Its AM/AM and AM/PM transfer functions have been excerpted from the DVB-S2 standard [15] and are shown in Fig. 4(a). The second amplier is another state-of-the-art HPA, which operates at the S-Band and will be denoted as . Its AM/AM and AM/PM transfer functions are illustrated in Fig. 4(b). In both gures, the AM/AM and AM/PM characteristics are presented

as output versus input back off (OBO and IBO). It is noted that the linearized exhibits fairly constant AM/PM characteristics for IBO signal levels ranging from 12 dB to 3 dB before saturation. Furthermore, comparing their transfer functions, it is noted that although their AM/AM transfer functions are similar, their AM/PM differ with the being signicantly non-linear. It should be also noted that although these HPAs are typically used on-board, without any loss of generality on our analysis, they could be also used for the uplink. C. Classes of Users Fig. 5 illustrates the general case of asynchronous reception where the following three distinct classes of users are shown. 1) User A: This class of users represents the information carrying users and will be referred to as Useful Users (UU). 2) User B: This class of users represents the asynchronous, with respect to the UU, users and will be referred to as Other Users (OU). 3) User C: This class of users represents the users contributing IBI and will be referred to as IBI Users (IBIU). The signals from each of these classes of users consist of sequences of -FDMA symbols with duration , each of them preceded by a CP with duration . In the same gure, the receivers observation time interval and its time offsets from the signals of the three classes of users are also indicated. As shown in Fig. 5 since for User C, the timing offset exceeds the duration of the CP , IBI will occur. Clearly, as increases, the amount of IBI will also increase.

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Fig. 5. Schematic of asynchronous reception. Three user classes are illustrated, namely, Users A, B and C. Sequences from -FDMA symbols prexed with CP are illustrated in relation to the common DFT window of the receiver.

As the other two time offsets ( or ) do not exceed the duration of the CP, i.e., , they do not introduce IBI. Since in our system model the discrete baseband equivalent signal representation is used, these time differences must be represented in discrete form. Hence, the number of sub-carriers , referred to as IBI factor, for which the offset exceeds CP, is used to present the amount of IBI introduced by User C. Since the time period corresponding to one sub-carrier is , the following relation for the delay and the sub-carriers can be derived:

of generality, only three users, each belonging to one of the three class of users, UU, OU and IBIU, have been selected. Performance evaluation results have been obtained with a common air-interface for both frequency bands. In particular, for the TE a Duo-Binary Convolutional Turbo Code from the DVB-RCS standard was selected [17]. The frame size was set 212 bit couples4 (424 total bits or ATM packets of 53 bytes) and the code rate . The modulator formed QPSK or 16-QAM symbols, while the Max-Log-MAP algorithm [18] with 8 iterations was used to perform decoding. The user block consists of sub-carriers, the length of the IDFT, sub-carriers and the length of CP is sub-carriers. A. Synchronous Reception

(6) where denotes integer part.

III. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The -FDMA multi-user communication system under consideration has been implemented in software employing a maximum of 15 users. Its performance has been evaluated by means of Monte Carlo computer simulations for synchronous and asynchronous reception. On the one hand, for synchronous reception, the Total Degradation (TD) performance has been used to evaluate the degradation caused by the two ampliers, and . The TD was introduced in [16] as performance criterion indicating how, as compared to the AWGN channel, the BER performance degrades in the presence of a power amplier as a function of its operating point (i.e., IBO or OBO). For this reason, considering an AWGN channel, a target BER level must be selected as a point of reference. Only the rst user belongs to the class of User A (UU) and the remaining 14 users belong to the class of User B (OU). On the other hand, for asynchronous reception, to investigate the inuence of multi-user interference on the system performance the BER criterion3 was used. For the sake of clarity, but without any loss
3It is noted that here the TD is not a meaningful performance criterion since the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) should be kept constant.

This subsection presents TD performance evaluation results for each -FDMA scheme assuming ideal synchronization among users. Since , 15 (out of 16 possible) users were selected so that the remaining 8 sub-carriers have been used as guard tones. An expression for TD is given by [19]: (7) where is the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to achieve a target BER in an AWGN channel, is the required SNR for the same target BER, taking into account the distortion caused by the HPA at a certain IBO. While in literature (7) is commonly used for obtaining TD, in practice it is more useful to determine, instead of the best operating IBO, the corresponding best operating OBO, which allows direct use of TD for link budget calculations. Expressing OBO as a function of the nominal IBO, (7) becomes: (8) It is noted that since OBO is not only a function of IBO, but also depends on the modulation format and the particular -FDMA access scheme, it must be calculated for each case, individually. For the schemes under consideration the values of OBO
4Bits are encoded by couples and not individually as in the classical approach and the resulting Turbo Code is labeled Duo-Binary Turbo [17].

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IBO

AND

TABLE I OBO CORRESPONDENCE PER ACCESS SCHEME AND MODULATION FORMAT

Fig. 6. TD versus OBO for coded QPSK with rate 1/2 obtained at

: (a) linearized

; (b)

Fig. 7. TD versus OBO for coded 16-QAM with rate 1/2 obtained at

: (a) linearized

; (b)

as a function of IBO have been obtained via simulation and are presented in Table I. The TD performance versus OBO has been obtained by means of computer simulations setting the target . The best operating point for an HPA is the one that presents the lowest TD, . The obtained results can be classied according to the employed modulation schemes and HPAs. Fig. 6(a) and (b) illustrates the TD for the and ampliers, respectively, when QPSK is used. For the amplier [see Fig. 6(a)], the occurs at about 1 dB for both LFDMA and IFDMA and at about 2 dB for the OFDMA scheme. When is employed [see Fig. 6(b)], the occurs a bit higher, i.e., for

both LFDMA and IFDMA have a and for the OFDMA . The TD performance for the and ampliers using 16-QAM are illustrated in Fig. 7(a) and (b), respectively. For the amplier [see Fig. 7(a)], for both LFDMA and IFDMA schemes, while for the OFDMA scheme . Similar to the QPSK case, for the amplier [see Fig. 7(b)], occurs higher than the one for the . Both LFDMA and IFDMA have a and for the OFDMA scheme . Clearly, these performance evaluation results have shown that, independent of the choice of amplier and/or modulation scheme, IFDMA exhibits consistently the lowest , while

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Fig. 9. BER performances on a per user and per access scheme basis as a function of the IBI, introduced by User C without an HPA. Solid lines were used to depict the performance of User A, dash-dotted lines for User B and dashed lines for User C.

Fig. 8. Schematic of the 3 users scenario assuming synchronous reception: (a) LFDMA; (b) IFDMA; (c) OFDMA.

the performance of the LFDMA is only slightly worst. Due to their lower PAPR [5], which make them less sensitive to non-linearities [6], both schemes outperform OFDMA. B. Asynchronous Reception This subsection presents BER performance evaluation results for the three access schemes in an AWGN channel and the presence of interference which is caused by the asynchronous reception. For this case, a fundamental scenario consisting of three distinct users, each belonging to a set of users, i.e., Users A, B and C, was adopted. As illustrated in Fig. 5, User C, i.e., a IBIU type user, will introduce different levels of IBI depending upon the selected value of the IBI factor (see (6)). User A is considered as the UU and User B is an OU type of user. For illustration purposes and assuming ideal synchronous reception, the -FDMA signals are graphically shown in Fig. 8. However, for asynchronous reception, due to the complex DFT process such a graphical representation is not easily illustrated. Due to the signicant performance degradation caused by IBI, only QPSK modulation with (before saturation) were considered. The symbol energy to noise power spectral density ratio was dB per subcarrier, where is the QPSK symbol energy. The various performance evaluation results which have been obtained are summarized in Figs. 911 where the BER performance on a per user and per access scheme basis are presented as a function of the IBI factor, . Fig. 9 can serve as a reference since these BER performance results have been obtained for a linear, i.e., without any HPA, channel. Figs. 10 and 11 present equivalent performance results in the presence of the and ampliers, respectively.
Fig. 10. Same as Fig. 9 but also using the amplier.

Fig. 11. Same as Fig. 9 but also using the

amplier.

As it can be seen from the obtained performance results, in all three cases and independent of the access scheme, the BER of User C is rapidly deteriorating with increasing IBI. The performance of User B, whose sub-carriers are next in frequency to those of User C, is better, while User A exhibits the best performance, since its sub-carriers are located even further away. An interesting observation is made by noting that the performance of User A does not change signicantly

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TABLE II ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES FOR EACH ACCESS SCHEME NON-LINEAR CHANNEL AND IN THE PRESENCE OF IBI. A MEANS ADVANTAGE, A MEANS DISADVANTAGE, AND MEANS ALMOST EQUAL TO THE BEST

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
IN A

The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments that helped improve the presentation of the paper. REFERENCES
[1] ETSI, Digital video broadcasting (DVB): Frame structure channel coding and modulation for a second generation digital terrestrial television broadcasting system (DVB-T2), Tech. Rep. EN 302 755 v1.1.1, Sep. 2009 [Online]. Available: http://www.dvb.org/technology/dvbt2/ [2] Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB): Framing Structure, channel coding and modulation for Satellite Services to Handheld devices (DVB-SH) below 3 GHz, Tech. Rep. EN 302 583 v1.1.3, Jun. 2010 [Online]. Available: http://www.etsi.org [3] 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Evolved universal terrestrial radio access (e-utra), Tech. Rep. 3GPP TR 36.942, Jan. 2009 [Online]. Available: http://www.3gpp.org [4] R. van Nee and R. Prasad, OFDM for Wireless Multimedia Communications, 1st ed. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2000. [5] H. G. Myung and D. J. Goodman, Single Carrier FDMA: A New Air Interface for Long Term Evolution, 1st ed. New York: Wiley, 2008. [6] D. Falconer, S. Ariyavisitakul, A. Benyamin-Seeyar, and B. Eidson, Frequency domain equalization for single-carrier broadband wireless systems, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 40, no. 4, pp. 5866, Apr. 2002. [7] H. G. Myung, J. Lim, and D. J. Goodman, Peak-to-average power ratio of single carrier FDMA signals with pulse shaping, 17th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications. Helsinki, Finland, Sep. 2006, pp. 15. [8] C. Ciochina, D. Mottier, and H. Sari, An analysis of three multiple access techniques for the uplink of future cellular mobile systems, European Transactions on Telecommunications vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 581588, 2008 [Online]. Available: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com [9] H. G. Myung, J. Lim, and D. J. Goodman, Single carrier FDMA for uplink wireless transmission, IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 3038, Sep. 2006. [10] G. Berardinelli, B. E. Priyanto, T. B. Srensen, and P. E. Mogensen, Improving SC-FDMA performance by turbo equalization in utra LTE uplink, in VTC Spring. Singapore: IEEE, May 2008, pp. 25572561. [11] G. Berardinelli, L. ngel Maestro Ruiz de Temio, S. Frattasi, M. I. Rahman, and P. Mogensen, OFDMA vs. SC-FDMA: Performance comparison in local area IMT-A scenarios, IEEE Wireless Communications, vol. 15, no. 5, pp. 6472, Oct. 2008. [12] J. Gazda, P. Drotar, P. Galajda, and D. Kocur, Comparative evaluation of OFDMA and SC-FDMA based transmission systems, in Proceedings of IEEE 8th International Symposium on Applied Machine Intelligence and Informatics (SAMI), 2010., Jan. 2010, pp. 177181. [13] Digital Satellite Communications, G. E. Corazza, Ed., 1st ed. New York: Springer, 2007. [14] Z. Wang, X. Ma, and G. B. Giannakis, OFDM or single-carrier block transmissions?, IEEE Trans. Communications, vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 380394, Mar. 2004. [15] ETSI, Digital video broadcasting (DVB): Second generation framing structure, channel coding and modulation system for broadcasting, interactive services, News gathering and other broadband satellite applications, Tech. Rep. EN 302 307 v1.1.2, Jun. 2006 [Online]. Available: http://www.etsi.org [16] A. DAndrea, V. Lottici, and R. Reggiannini, RF power amplier linearization through amplitude and phase predistortion, IEEE Trans. Communications, vol. 44, no. 11, pp. 14771484, Nov. 1996. [17] ETSI, Digital video broadcasting (DVB): Interaction channel for satellite distribution systems.(DVB-RCS), Tech. Rep. EN 301 790 v1.3.1, Mar. 2003 [Online]. Available: http://www.etsi.org [18] S. Papaharalabos, P. Sweeney, B. G. Evans, P. T. Mathiopoulos, G. Albertazzi, A. Vanelli-Coralli, and G. E. Corazza, Modied sum-product algorithms for decoding low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, IEE Proceedings on Communications, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 294300, Jun. 2007. [19] S. C. Thompson, J. G. Proakis, and J. R. Zeidler, The effectiveness of signal clipping for PAPR and total degradation reduction in OFDM systems, in Proceedings of IEEE Global Telecommun. Conf, 2005, pp. 28072811.

when varies. It is also noted that the OFDMA exhibits similar performance with LFDMA in absence of non-linearity (see Fig. 9), while in the presence of HPA the LFDMA scheme outperforms OFDMA. Clearly, an IBIU type user, such as User C in Fig. 5, will affect its own performance as well as the performance of other users located in its neighborhood. For example, the smaller its frequency distance is from a UU type user, such as User A in Fig. 5, the higher will be the degradation. Further experiments have shown that the degradation of a UU will also increase by increasing the number of IBIUs. It is thus recommended that the number of IBIUs should be kept to a minimum. Table II presents a qualitative comparison of the performances of the three access schemes for specic values of the IBI factor. Clearly, the IFDMA access scheme, although it prevailed in performance for synchronous reception, is the most sensitive to IBI. For a non-linear channel both LFDMA and IFDMA have an advantage over OFDMA. However, when IBI is present, combined with a non-linearity, the performances of the three access schemes depend on amount of IBI, i.e., as . LFDMA and IFDMA outperform OFDMA for lower IBI levels. For low , the performance of LFDMA and IFDMA is nearly identical, while LFDMA slightly outperforms IFDMA as IBI increases. Furthermore, the performance of LFDMA does not change signicantly as increases, in contrast to the performance of the IFDMA scheme that degrades.

IV. CONCLUSION This paper presented a thorough comparison study for two SC-FDMA schemes, LFDMA and IFDMA versus OFDMA, for a satellite uplink, the air-interface of which is based on the DVB-family of standards. Both synchronous and asynchronous signal reception has been considered for two state-of-the-art HPAs operating in the K- and S-band. Performance evaluation results have shown that for a synchronous system IFDMA outperforms OFDMA and is slightly better than LFDMA in TD performance, although, for asynchronous reception it is the most sensitive to degradation. OFDMA, due to its large PAPR, has been found as the most sensitive to non-linearity. On the contrary, LFDMA had only slightly inferior performance as compared to IFDMA for synchronous reception while it outperformed the other two access schemes in the asynchronous scenario examined, i.e., in the presence of IBI.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 58, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2012

Vassilis Dalakas (M01) received the B.Sc. degree in physics, the M.Sc. degree (with honors) with specialization in digital signal processing, and the Ph.D. degree with specialization in digital communications, all from the University of Athens (UoA), Greece, in 1998, 2002, and 2010, respectively. The main part of his Ph.D. thesis research was carried out at the Institute for Space Applications and Remote Sensing (ISARS) of the National Observatory of Athens (NOA). Since 2001 he has been afliated also with the Harokopio University of Athens (HUA), Greece, as a Research Fellow (20012007 in the Department of Geography and since 2008 in the Department of Informatics and Telematics) and as a network and system administrator since 2005. His research interests include wireless digital communications for satellite and terrestrial system applications, digital signal processing techniques, as well as modeling and simulation standardization methods. In these areas, he has co-authored several papers and a book chapter. He has been a technical expert in Information Technology for the Greek Government and a reviewer of several scientic journals and conferences. Dr. Dalakas was a co-recipient of the 2006 Best Paper Award in Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Software Engineering and Data Engineering (SEDE). Through his afliation with ISARS/NOA he has participated in a number of R&D projects funded by the European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA).

Dr. Mathiopoulos has been or currently serves on the editorial board of several scientic journals, including the IET Communications, and the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS (19932005). He has regularly acted as a consultant for various governmental and private organizations. Since 1993, he has served on a regular basis as a scientic advisor and a technical expert for the European Commission (EC). In addition, since 2001 he has served as the Greek representative to high level committees in the European Commission (EC) and the European Space Agency (ESA). He has been a member of the TPC of more than 50 international conferences, as well as TPC Vice Chair for the 2006-S IEEE VTC and 2008-F IEEE VTC as well as Co-Chair of FITCE2011. He has delivered numerous invited presentations, including plenary lectures, and has taught many short courses all over the world. He was an ASI Fellow, a Killam Research Fellow and a co-recipient of two best paper awards (2nd International Symposium on Communication, Control, and Signal Processing in 2008 and 3rd International Conference on Advances in Satellite and Space Communications in 2011). Further details are available at http://www.space.noa.gr/ mathio/.

P. Takis Mathiopoulos (SM94) received the Ph.D. degree in digital communications from the University of Ottawa, Canada, in 1989. From 19821986, he was with Raytheon Canada Ltd., working in the areas of air navigational and satellite communications. In 1988, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada, where he was a faculty member until 2003, holding the rank of Professor since 2000. He is currently Director of Research at the Institute for Space Applications and Remote Sensing (ISARS), National Observatory of Athens (NOA), where he established the Wireless Communications Research Group. As ISARS Director (20002004), he has led the Institute to a signicant expansion R&D growth, and international scientic recognition. For these achievements, ISARS has been selected as a national Centre of Excellence for the years 2005 to 2008. Since 2003 he also teaches part-time at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens, where he was recently elected Professor of Digital Communications. In 2008 and for a period of 5 years he has been appointed Guest Professor at the Southwest Jiaotong University, China. For the last 20 years he has been conducting research mainly on the physical layer of digital communication systems for terrestrial and satellite applications, including digital communications over fading and interference environments. He co-authored a paper in GLOBECOM89 establishing for the rst time in the open technical literature the link between MLSE and multiple (or multi-symbol) differential detection for the AWGN and fading channels. He is also interested in channel characterization and measurements, modulation and coding techniques, SIMO/MIMO, UWB, OFDM, software/cognitive radios, and green communications. In these areas, he has co-authored more than 80 journal papers, mainly published in various IEEE and IET journals, 4 book chapters and more than 110 conference papers. He has been PI for more than 40 research grants and has supervised the thesis of 11 Ph.D. and 23 Master students.

Filippo Di Cecca received the Dr. Ing. degree in TLC engineering in 2007 from the University of Rome Tor Vergata with a thesis on radars. He received in 2009 the M.Sc. degree in advanced satellite systems of telecommunications and navigation from the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Since 2007 he has been working with Space Engineering in TLC department. He has been involved in several ESA projects and his main interests are in satellite TLC area (mainly physical and MAC layers analyses and simulations).

Gennaro Gallinaro received the Doctoral degree in electronic engineering (magna cum laude) from University of Rome in 1979 with a thesis on TV signals digital compression techniques. From 1979 to 1980 he worked at Fondazione Bordoni (Government Research Center on Advanced Telecommunications) on Teletex signal simulations. After serving in the Italian Navy he joined Telespazio in 1981 where he was rst involved in system planning studies, and then in the analysis and simulation of RF transmission links, payload hardware assessment, new modulation access techniques and analog/digital signal processing technologies. Since 1989 he has been with Space Engineering S.p.A. where he was involved in several space communications related projects and studies. He has got in-depth experience in the analysis, computer-aided design and simulation of transmission systems (modulation, coding, etc.) and digital signal processing hardware (on-board multi-carrier demodulators (MCDs), digital beam forming, etc.). He is co-author of several papers, on Signal Processing and satellite communication techniques. Dr. Gallinaro was a co-recipient of the 2003 and 2009 IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Jack Neubauer Memorial Awards which recognize the best systems paper published in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY.