What is an Filter Bank Multicarrier Modulation

Filter Bank Multicarrier, FBMC is a form of multicarrier modulation in which the carriers are filtered to provide a more spectrally efficient form of the waveform.

This technique added generalized pulse shaping filters which deliver a well-localized subchannel in both the time and frequency domain to overcome the limitations of OFDM.
Therefore, FBMC systems have more spectral containment signals and offer more effective use of radio resources where no CP is required.
In the above Figure on the transmitter side, the filter bank used is called the synthesis filter bank, and the filter bank used on the receiver side is called the analysis filter bank.
In the above Figure that the filter banks of the transmitter and the receiver consist of an array of N filters that process N input signals to give N outputs.
If the inputs of these N filters are combined then the system in an analogous manner can be measured as an analyzer to the input signal based on each filter’s characteristics.
The input signal is first converted from serial to parallel form and then passed through the synthesis filter bank and then it is converted back to serial form after coming out of the synthesis bank.
After this the receiver side of the signal passes through the channel it is converted to parallel form by serial to parallel converter and passed through the analysis filter bank.
Finally, when the output signal is obtained it is again converted to serial form by parallel to serial converter.
So, the synthesis-analysis configuration depicted is called transmulitplexer or TMUX and is applied in the MC communication systems.

Advantages of Filter Bank Multicarrier Modulation

FBMC can provide a spectrum-efficient and more selective system.
The cyclic prefix, CP required for OFDM is not needed thereby freeing up more space for real data.
Provide robust narrowband jammers.

The use of MIMO with FBMC is very complicated and as a result, few systems have investigated the use of these two techniques together.
The design of wide bandwidth and high dynamic range systems with FBMC provides some significant RF development challenges.
FBMC is more complicated than OFDM – it introduces an overhead in overlapping symbols in the filter bank in the time domain.