Table 3.

Comparison of OFDM and FBMC

Feature or parameter	OFDM	FBMC
Pulse shape	Pulse shape: rectangular (or almost rectangular in practical realizations due to various analogue filters)	Various shapes (e.g., IOTA, Gaussian, enhanced Gaussian pulse, Bellanger, etc.)
Cyclic prefix	Yes (up to 25 % of OFDM symbol duration)	No
Overlapping of pulses in time and frequency directions	Pulses do not overlap in time domain, orthogonality is preserved in frequency domain	Adjacent pulses overlap in both domains
AFLR	Poor (−13 dB for sinc-like shapes in frequency domain)	It can be kept very small (e.g., −60 dB for IOTA pulse)
Spectral efficiency	Limited by cyclic prefix	Limited by roll-off factor of the pulse
Complexity	It can be kept low; possible implementation with filter banks	It can be kept small, but always slightly higher than in OFDM; effective implementation with filter banks
Peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)	High	High (it can be almost at the same level as for OFDM)