Multiple Access and Waveforms for 5G: IDMA and Filtered Multi-Carrier Compared to OFDM

In this paper we are investigating multiple access schemes and multi-carrier waveforms in the context of future 5G wireless communication systems. We compare classical frequency division multiple access (FDMA) to interleave-division multiple access (IDMA) on top of two different multi-carrier waveforms: OFDM and a new approach called Universal Filtered Multi- Carrier (UFMC). A relaxation of timing and frequency alignment requirements is taken into account for supporting applications like Machine Type Communication (MTC) and the Internet of Things (IoT). This paper contains a first uplink comparison scenario where traffic with relaxed synchronicity is embedded into synchronous traffic. Two main users of interest are either using IDMA or FDMA on top of either OFDM or UFMC modulation. Simulation results give first suitability indications for 5G for the combination of waveform and multiple access scheme.