Adaptive OFDM Techniques With One-Bit-Per-Subcarrier Channel-State Feedback

In the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme, some subcarriers may be subject to a deep fading. Adaptive techniques can be applied to mitigate this effect if the channel-state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter. In this paper, we study the performance of an OFDM-based communication system whose transmitter has only one bit of CSI per subcarrier, obtained through a low-rate feedback. Three adaptive approaches are considered to exploit such a CSI feedback: adaptive subcarrier selection; adaptive power allocation (APA); and adaptive modulation selection (AMS). Under the conditions of a constant raw data rate and perfect feedback channel, the performance of these approaches are analyzed and compared in terms of raw bit-error rate. It is shown that one-bit CSI feedback can greatly enhance the system performance. Moreover, imperfections of the feedback channel are considered, and their impact on the performance of these techniques is studied. It is shown that by exploiting the knowledge that the feedback channel is imperfect, the performance of the APA and AMS techniques can be substantially improved