Pulse shaping of OFDM systems in AWGN channel

This paper studies the effects of pulse shaping and phase noise on inter-carrier interference (ICI) and bit error rate (BER) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communications systems. The BER of a binary phase shift keying (BPSK) transmission system with the inclusion of phase noise is derived first. Five different pulses are then examined: rectangular pulse (R), raised cosine pulse (RC), 'better than' raised cosine pulse (BTRC), sinc-power pulse (SP) and improved sine-power pulse (ISP). Their effects on ICI and BER are then studied in detail. From that, their merits and demerits are addressed and discussed. Possible future work is also outlined. The main contributions of this paper are for the first time: (1) deriving the BER of OFDM systems as a function of ICI power and phase noise, and (2) showing the effects of pulse shaping on ICI and hence BER which have not been thoroughly reported in the literature.