Modulation type | advantages | Inconvenience |
OFDM and its variants | sélective fading immunity; Resilience to interferences; Spectrum Efficiency; Resilient to ISI; Resilient to narrow band effects; Simpler channel equalization; | High peak-to-average power ratio; Sensitive to offset and drift of the Unsuitable for communication with high mobility; |
CP-OFDM | Easier frequency domain equalization Flexible frequency assignment Low implementation complexity Easier MIMO integration | PAPR and high out-of-band emissions (OOBE) Cyclic Prefix Encoding Time Poor performance in case of high mobility Tighter sync limits |
W-OFDM | Lower OOBE Lower implementation complexity | Low spectral efficiency Low BER. |
F-OFDM | Flexible filter granularity Better frequency localization Shorter filter length MIMO-compatible | Great complexity of implementation |
CP-DFT-s-OFDM | Lower PAPR | High OOBE Strict timing requirements |
ZT-DFT-s-OFDM | Flexible guard interval Superior spectral efficiency Lower OOBE than CP-DFT-s-OFDM | Additional control signaling Limited link performance (for higher order modulation) |
UW-DFT-s-OFDM | Optimal spectral efficiency Lowest OOBE and PAPR | All inconvenients of ZT-DFT-s-OFDM High implementation complexity |
FBMC | High Spectral Efficiency and Selectivity; Strength of bands; Removal of side lobes | Overlapping symbols; Difficulty of use in MIMO systems; Requires very long filter usage; Difficult to be used in IOT and M2M communication. |
OQAM-FBMC | Optimal frequency localization High spectral efficiency - No resistance to intersymbol interference (ISI) (due to no guard band or CP) Suitable for asynchronous transmission Suitable for high mobility use cases | Hard driver design No resistance to inter-symbol interference (ISI) High implementation complexity High energy consumption |
UFMC | Significant reduction of out-of-band waves; Well localized filtering Shorter length compared to subcarrier size MIMO compatibility | High PAPR Difficulty designing the receiver due to OQAM No immunity to ISI High receptor complexity |
GFDM | effective suppression of out-of-band emissions. Reduced PAPR on average Superior frequency localization Flexible design | Management of ISI/ICI very difficult; Modulation complexity due to prototype filter; discontinuities between blocks Higher latency due to block processing Intégration MIMO difficile High implementation complexity |
IM | Provide high throughput Simple to implement | Lack of model to be used in all waveforms |
OTFS | Ability to handle strong Doppler channels Exploiting frequency dispersion for diversity Efficient UE multiplexing | Higher implementation complexity Suboptimal equalization architectures |