On the Use of Precoding in FBMC/OQAM Systems

Linear precoding can be applied to multicarrier systems to minimize the effect that a deep fade in one of the subchannels can have on the overall bit error ratio when the transmitter does not have channel state information (CSI). But for filterbank multicarrier (FBMC) systems, which were proposed to overcome the poor spectral characteristics and bandwidth/energy waste caused by the use of the cyclic prefix, there are very few proposals of precoded systems in the literature. This paper proposes a precoded SISO (single-input single-output) filterbank multicarrier system with zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization. Results show that in a well-equalized system, the Monte Carlo simulation results match the ones provided by the BER approximation presented in this paper. However, in systems with residual interference, the Monte Carlo results drift from the approximation at high SNR values, with the error performance from precoded FBMC systems being more affected by the unequalized interference.