Design of Multi-Carrier Modulation for Doubly Selective Channels Based on a Complexity-Constrained Achievable Rate Metric

Multi-carrier modulation (MCM) is widely studied as a communication technique for time- and frequency selective (hence, doubly selective) channels. MCM schemes are usually designed either to reduce decoding complexity, to exploit diversity gains, or to enhance spectral efficiency. However, no known scheme accounts for all three concerns. In this paper, we propose a design metric based on complexity-constrained achievable rate that accounts for all three of these concerns. We then use this metric to characterize a trade-off between achievable rate and implementation complexity, assuming frequency-domain processing at the receiver. Finally, we use this metric to compare several MCM schemes under the same level of receiver complexity.