Improved Nyquist pulse shaping filters for generalized frequency division multiplexing

Generalized Frequency-Division Multiplexing (GFDM) is one of the multicarrier modulation schemes currently under study for next generation 5G cellular networks. One of the main characteristics of GFDM is the low out of band emission that is achieved by means of a flexible time-domain pulse shaping of individual subcarriers. In the paper, we propose to use improved Nyquist pulse shaping filters which have been originally introduced in the context of single-carrier modulation schemes for reducing the sensitivity to symbol timing error due to their higher eye opening and smaller maximum distortion. Here we consider their use in GFDM and evaluate their symbol error rate (SER) performance in case of 16-QAM transmission over an additive white Gaussian noise channel. Moreover, we also considered the concept of the wavelet for better time-frequency localization of the pulse shaping filters by using the Meyer auxiliary function. Numerical results are reported to demonstrate the superior SER performance achieved by the proposed improved Nyquist pulse shaping filters in comparison to that achieved with conventional Nyquist pulse shaping filters.