BER Performance of Polar Coded OFDM in Multipath Fading

Abstract

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has gained a lot of popularity over the years. Due to its popularity, OFDM has been adopted as a standard in cellular technology and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) communication systems. To improve the bit error rate (BER) performance, forward error correction (FEC) codes are often utilized to protect signals against unknown interference and channel degradations. In this paper, we apply soft-decision FEC, more specifically polar codes and a convolutional code, to an OFDM system in a quasi-static multipath fading channel, and compare BER performance in various channels. We investigate the effect of interleaving bits within a polar codeword. Finally, the simulation results for each case are presented in the paper.