802.11ad Packet Error Rate Simulation for OFDM PHY

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This example shows how to measure the packet error rate of an IEEE® 802.11ad™ DMG OFDM PHY link using an end-to-end simulation with an AWGN channel.

Introduction

In this example an end-to-end simulation is used to determine the packet error rate for an 802.11ad DMG [ 1 ] OFDM link with an AWGN channel at a selection of SNR points for a defined modulation and coding scheme (MCS). For each SNR point, multiple packets are transmitted through a channel, demodulated and the PSDUs recovered. The PSDUs are compared to those transmitted to determine the number of packet errors and hence the packet error rate. Perfect time and frequency synchronization is assumed in this example. The following diagram summarizes the processing for each packet.

This example also demonstrates how speed up simulations by using a parfor loop instead of a for loop when simulating each SNR point. The parfor function, as part of the Parallel Computing Toolbox™, executes processing for each SNR in parallel to reduce the total simulation time.

Waveform Configuration

An 802.11ad DMG OFDM transmission is simulated in this example. The DMG format configuration object, wlanDMGConfig, contains the format specific configuration of the transmission. The properties of the object contain the configuration. In this example the object is configured for an OFDM transmission with MCS 21 and an 8192 byte PSDU. If mcs is specified as a vector, the simulation is performed for each MCS element. The MCS determines the PHY type used, therefore the MCS must be within the range 13-24 to use the OFDM PHY.

% Create a format configuration object for a DMG OFDM transmission
cfgDMG = wlanDMGConfig;
cfgDMG.PSDULength = 8192; % bytes

% For DMG OFDM PHY, the valid range of MCS is 13-24(inclusive)
mcs = 21; % OFDM PHY, 16QAM, rate 13/16

Simulation Parameters

For each SNR point a number of packets are generated, passed through a channel and demodulated to determine the packet error rate. The SNR points to simulate are selected from snrRanges based on the MCS to simulate. The SNR range for each MCS is selected in order to simulate the transition from all packets being decoded in error to all packets being decoded successfully as the SNR increases.

% SNR ranges to use for AWGN
snrRanges = {...
    -1:0.5:1.5, ...  % MCS 13
    0:0.5:2.5, ...   % MCS 14
    1.5:0.5:4, ...   % MCS 15
    3:0.5:5.5, ...   % MCS 16
    4.5:0.5:7, ...   % MCS 17
    7.5:0.5:10, ...  % MCS 18
    9:0.5:11.5, ...  % MCS 19
    10.5:0.5:13, ... % MCS 20
    12:0.5:14.5, ... % MCS 21
    14.5:0.5:17, ... % MCS 22
    16.5:0.5:19, ... % MCS 23
    17.5:0.5:20, ... % MCS 24
    };

The number of packets tested at each SNR point is controlled by two parameters:

maxNumErrors is the maximum number of packet errors simulated at each SNR point. When the number of packet errors reaches this limit, the simulation at this SNR point is complete.
maxNumPackets is the maximum number of packets simulated at each SNR point and limits the length of the simulation if the packet error limit is not reached.

The numbers chosen in this example will lead to a very short simulation. For meaningful results we recommend increasing these numbers.

maxNumErrors = 10;   % The maximum number of packet errors at an SNR point
maxNumPackets = 100; % Maximum number of packets at an SNR point

Set the remaining variables for the simulation.

% OFDM information
ofdmInfo = wlanDMGOFDMInfo();

% Indices of data and pilot occupied subcarriers
cfgDMG.MCS = mcs(1); % Set OFDM MCS to get subcarrier indices
Nsd = numel(ofdmInfo.DataIndices); % Number of data carrying subcarriers

Processing SNR Points

For each SNR point a number of packets are tested and the packet error rate calculated.

For each packet the following processing steps occur:

A PSDU is created and encoded to create a single packet waveform.
AWGN is added to the waveform to create the desired average SNR per subcarrier after OFDM demodulation. The comm.AWGNChannel object is configured to provide the correct SNR. The configuration accounts for the noise energy in unused subcarriers which are removed during OFDM demodulation.
The DMG-Data field is extracted from the perfectly synchronized received waveform and OFDM demodulated.
The pilots are discarded and the remaining OFDM demodulated symbols are equalized using the known channel response. As an AWGN link is used in this example, the complex channel gain is assumed to be one for each subcarrier.
The PSDU is recovered from the equalized data symbols.

A parfor loop can be used to parallelize processing of the SNR points, therefore for each SNR point an AWGN channel is created and configured with the comm.AWGNChannel object. To use parallel computing for increased speed, comment out the for statement and uncomment the parfor statement in this code.

numSNR = numel(snrRanges{1}); % Number of SNR points
numMCS = numel(mcs);          % Number of MCS
packetErrorRate = zeros(numMCS,numSNR);

for imcs = 1:numMCS
    cfgDMG.MCS = mcs(imcs);
    if ~strcmp(phyType(cfgDMG),'OFDM')
        error('This example only supports DMG OFDM PHY simulation');
    end

    % Indices of fields within the packet
    fieldIndices = wlanFieldIndices(cfgDMG);

    % SNR points to simulate from MCS
    snr = snrRanges{cfgDMG.MCS-12};

    %parfor isnr = 1:numSNR % Use 'parfor' to speed up the simulation
    for isnr = 1:numSNR % Use 'for' to debug the simulation
        % Set random substream index per iteration to ensure that each
        % iteration uses a repeatable set of random numbers
        stream = RandStream('combRecursive','Seed',0);
        stream.Substream = isnr;
        RandStream.setGlobalStream(stream);

        % Create an instance of the AWGN channel per SNR point simulated
        awgnChannel = comm.AWGNChannel;
        awgnChannel.NoiseMethod = 'Signal to noise ratio (SNR)';
        awgnChannel.SignalPower = 1;
        % Account for noise energy in nulls so the SNR is defined per
        % active subcarrier
        awgnChannel.SNR = snr(isnr)-10*log10(ofdmInfo.FFTLength/ofdmInfo.NumTones);

        % Loop to simulate multiple packets
        numPacketErrors = 0;
        numPkt = 1; % Index of packet transmitted
        while numPacketErrors<=maxNumErrors && numPkt<=maxNumPackets
            % Generate a packet waveform
            txPSDU = randi([0 1],cfgDMG.PSDULength*8,1); % PSDULength in bytes
            tx = wlanWaveformGenerator(txPSDU,cfgDMG);

            % Pass the waveform through AWGN channel model
            rx = awgnChannel(tx);

            % Extract data field
            rxData = rx(fieldIndices.DMGData(1):fieldIndices.DMGData(2));

            % OFDM demodulate
            demodSym = wlanDMGOFDMDemodulate(rxData);
            dataSym = demodSym(ofdmInfo.DataIndices,:); % Discard pilots

            % Equalize
            chanSym = ones(Nsd,1); % Set channel gains to 1 as AWGN channel
            nVar = 10^(-snr(isnr)/10); % Noise variance
            [eqSym,csi] = helperSymbolEqualize(dataSym,chanSym,nVar);

            % Recover data
            rxPSDU = wlanDMGDataBitRecover(eqSym,nVar,csi,cfgDMG);

            % Determine if any bits are in error, i.e. a packet error
            packetError = any(biterr(txPSDU,rxPSDU));
            numPacketErrors = numPacketErrors+packetError;
            numPkt = numPkt+1;
        end

        % Calculate packet error rate (PER) at SNR point
        packetErrorRate(imcs,isnr) = numPacketErrors/(numPkt-1);
        disp(['MCS ' num2str(mcs(imcs)) ','...
              ' SNR ' num2str(snr(isnr)) ...
              ' completed after ' num2str(numPkt-1) ' packets,'...
              ' PER:' num2str(packetErrorRate(imcs,isnr))]);
    end
end

MCS 21, SNR 12 completed after 11 packets, PER:1
MCS 21, SNR 12.5 completed after 12 packets, PER:0.91667
MCS 21, SNR 13 completed after 71 packets, PER:0.15493
MCS 21, SNR 13.5 completed after 100 packets, PER:0.02
MCS 21, SNR 14 completed after 100 packets, PER:0
MCS 21, SNR 14.5 completed after 100 packets, PER:0

Plot Packet Error Rate vs SNR Results

markers = 'ox*sd^v><ph+';
color = 'bmcrgbrkymcr';
figure;
for imcs = 1:numMCS
    semilogy(snrRanges{mcs(imcs)-12},packetErrorRate(imcs,:).',['-' markers(imcs) color(imcs)]);
    hold on;
end
grid on;
xlabel('SNR (dB)');
ylabel('PER');
dataStr = arrayfun(@(x)sprintf('MCS %d',x),mcs,'UniformOutput',false);
legend(dataStr);
title('PER for DMG OFDM-PHY with AWGN channel');

Further Exploration

The number of packets tested at each SNR point is controlled by two parameters: maxNumErrors and maxNumPackets. For meaningful results these values should be larger than those presented in this example. Increasing the number of packets simulated allows the PER under different scenarios to be compared. As an example, the figure below was created by running the example for longer with maxNumErrors = 1e3 and maxNumPackets = 1e4, for mcs = 13:24.

Appendix

This example uses the following helper function:

helperSymbolEqualize.m

Selected Bibliography

IEEE Std 802.11ad™-2012 IEEE Standard for Information technology - Telecommunications and information exchange between systems - Local and metropolitan area networks - Specific requirements - Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specifications. Amendment 3: Enhancements for Very High Throughput in the 60 GHz Band.

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