On the study of faster-than-Nyquist multicarrier signaling based on frame theory

Multicarrier transmissions are classically based on undercomplete or exact Weyl-Heisenberg Riesz (biorthogonal or orthogonal) bases implemented thanks to oversampled filter-banks. This can be seen as a transmission below the Nyquist rate. However, when overcomplete Weyl-Heisenberg frames are used, we obtain a “faster-than-Nyquist” (FTN) system and it is theoretically impossible to recover exactly transmitted symbols using a linear receiver. Various studies have shown the interest of this high density signaling scheme as well as practical implementations based on trellis and/or iterative decoding. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of theoretical justifications with regard to pulse design in the FTN case. In this paper, we consider a linear transceiver operating over an additive white Gaussian noise channel. Using the frame theory and simulation results, we show that the mean squared error (MSE) is minimized when tight frames are used.