PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF ORTHOGONAL WAVELET DIVISION MULTIPLEX FOR 5G AND BEYOND

Waveform design for 5G New Radio (NR) must meet certain requirements as defined by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). As a result, many waveforms have been proposed. The major ingredient in these proposed waveforms is the Fourier transform. i.e. the Fourier transform based Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM). On the other hand, the proposition of wavelet use in OFDM is gaining momentum. A lot of research has proposed the wavelet transform based OFDM as a better replacement for the Fourier transform due to its properties such as localization in both time and frequency. In this paper, wavelet performance is explored and weighed against three of the future wireless application systems requirements (5G and beyond). These three requirements are lower Bit Error Rate (BER), high energy efficiency and immunity to Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO). The results presented here are sufficient to serve as a guideline on wavelet use in 5G, on how to make careful trade-offs, and as well as the guide for further developments.