Coexistence of orthogonal and nonorthogonal multicarrier signals in beyond 5G scenarios

Optimum operation of future mobile communication systems requires more flexible signalling mechanisms for radio access. For flexible heterogeneous signalling implementation, this work discusses coexistence scenarios of orthogonal and nonorthogonal multicarrier signals, specifically considering orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and spectrally efficient FDM (SEFDM) signals. Three main scenarios of the coexisting signalling are addressed under 5G new radio (5G NR) numerology with varying subcarrier spacing. Using numerical simulations, this work reports performance results of systems operating under the studied coexistence scenarios assuming uncoded and coded signals. Results reveal that systems employing SEFDM and OFDM result in some BER degradation when uncoded signals are used and also show that when applying low-density parity-check (LDPC) to the transmitted signals, the coexistence effects are mitigated and the block error rate (BLER) for both orthogonal and non-orthogonal signals suffers only slight degradation.