OFDM Performance on Aeronautical Channnels

Abstract

This paper provides an introduction to the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme which has been proposed for future aeronautical telemetry applications. OFDM offers the potential for high data rates on radio channels with multipath such as aeronautical telemetry channels. This paper provides in introduction to OFDM and demonstrates how orthogonality is maintained over multipath channels by the introduction of a guard band and by the inclusion of a cyclic prefix. The simulation of OFDM in multipath is simulated and performance results are presented that show the degradation of this scheme on a multipath channel with and without the guard band and the cyclic prefix.