Enhancing Wireless Communication: A Comparative Analysis of FBMC and OFDM with Performance Evaluation

Future wireless systems will encompass diverse use cases, demanding a flexible allocation of time-frequency resources—something conventional Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) struggles to achieve. To address these limitations, modifications such as windowing and filtering have been explored. Alternatively, Filter Bank Multi-Carrier (FBMC) has emerged as a promising modulation scheme. This paper presents a comprehensive framework for analyzing and evaluating FBMC in comparison to OFDM-based techniques. Our study, supported by both simulations and theoretical derivations, demonstrates that key challenges in FBMC, including multiple antenna integration and channel estimation, can be effectively managed. Additionally, we derive closed-form solutions for the signal-to-interference ratio in doubly-selective channels, revealing that simple one-tap equalizers are often sufficient for practical applications. To promote reproducibility, we provide downloadable MATLAB code supporting our findings.