Abstract
Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE), has recently attracted significant interest particularly in the wireless communications literature as an alternative air-interface solution to OFDM. Both SC-FDE and OFDM combat the detrimental effects of the frequency selective channel in a very efficient way; through the use of FFT/IFFT processing and parallel single-tap equalizers for each frequency bin. Despite their strong similarities, the two techniques differ in that in SC-FDE both the FFT and IFFT processing are performed at the receiving end. In the context of satellite communications, where power efficiency is a key objective, this difference translates into a much stronger resilience for SC-FDE to the non-linearity of the on-board High Power Amplifier (HPA). On the other hand the very high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) that characterizes OFDM signals requires employment of predistortion techniques and/or back-off. In this paper simulation results are provided, which show that SC-FDE offers some improvements to conventional OFDM in a S-UMTS downlink.