A Unique Wavelet-based Multicarrier System with and without MIMO over Multipath Channels with AWGN

Recent studies suggest that multicarrier systems using wavelets outperform conventional OFDM systems using the FFT, in that they have well-contained side lobes, improved spectral efficiency and BER performance, and they do not require a cyclic prefix. Here we study the wavelet packet and discrete wavelet transforms, comparing the BER performance of wavelet transform-based multicarrier systems and Fourier based OFDM systems, for multipath Rayleigh channels with AWGN. In the proposed system zero-forcing channel estimation in the frequency domain has been used. Results confirm that discrete wavelet-based systems using Daubechies wavelets outperform both wavelet packet transformbased systems and FFT-OFDM systems in terms of BER. Finally, Alamouti coding and maximal ratio combining schemes were employed in MIMO environments, where results show that the effects of multipath fading were greatly reduced by the antenna diversity.