A Factor Graph Approach to Exploiting Cyclic Prefix for Equalization in OFDM Systems

In OFDM systems, cyclic prefix (CP) insertion and removal enables the use of a set of computationally efficient single-tap equalizers at the receiver. Due to the extra transmission time and energy, the CP causes a loss in both spectrum efficiency and power efficiency. On the other hand, as a repetition of part of the data, the CP brings extra information and can be exploited for detection. Therefore, instead of discarding the CP observation as in the conventional OFDM system, we utilize all the received signals in a soft-input soft-output equalizer of a turbo equalization OFDM system. First, the models for both the CP part and the non-CP part of observation are presented in a Forney-style factor graph (FFG). Then based on the computation rules of the FFG and the Gaussian message passing (GMP) technique, we develop an equalization algorithm. With proper approximation, the complexity of the proposed algorithm is reduced to O(2RNlog2N+4RGlog2G+2RG) per data block for R iterations, where N is the length of the data block and G is equal to P+L-1 with P the length of the CP and L the maximum delay spread of the channel. To justify the performance improvement, SNR analysis is provided. Simulation results show that the proposed approach achieves a significant gain over the conventional approach and the turbo equalization system converges within two iterations.