Precoding and Receiver Processing for Multiple Access MIMO FBMC Systems

Different transceiver processing methods are considered for filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) multiple access MIMO system. FBMC is considered a contender as an access method for 5G due to better spectral properties without the loss of data rate incurred by the presence of cyclic prefix in comparison to OFDM. Flexible spectrum utilization and possibility of using different pulse shapes for a variety of scenarios make it an attractive option. However, the main challenge in FBMC systems is the presence of intersymbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier inteference (ICI). This makes the receiver performance to be degraded without suitable methods to mitigate those effects especially in the case of MIMO systems where there is a significant need for further investigation. We consider synchronous uplink and downlink multiple access with different processing techniques to alleviate interference. Results show that for the uplink we need to employ forward error correction in addition to receiver processing to obtain acceptable performance levels. With channel state and all users information available, the downlink produces better bit error rates (BER) comparatively.