Overall, the results indicate that CP-OFDM and DFT-s-OFDM remain the most suitable baseline waveforms for 6G NTN, providing the best trade-off between performance, complexity, and harmonization with TN. CP-OFDM is suitable for both uplink and downlink operation, benefiting from its simplicity, maturity, and compatibility with TN. DFT-s-OFDM is well-suited for the uplink, where power efficiency and HPA operation are critical. Alternative waveforms such as BF-OFDM and OTFS may serve as enhancement options for specific scenarios, but they do not provide sufficient system level advantages to replace CP-OFDM or DFT-s-OFDM as baseline solutions.
Availalble in IEEEXplore DOI: 10.1109/MCOMSTD.2026.3732522
Authors
Carla Amatetti, Alessandro Vanelli Coralli - Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering, University of Bologna, Italy
Marius Caus, Musbah Shaat, Miguel Ángel Vázquez - Centre Tecnologic De Telecomunicaciones De Catalunya (CTTC), Spain
Eduardo Medeiros, Chao Zhang, Per-Erik Eriksson, Sebastian Euler - Ericsson Sweden
Dorin Panaitopol, Sorya Tong - Thales SIX GTS France SAS, France
Estefanía Recayte - Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Germany
Published in the IEEE Communications Standards Magazine (Early access).
Open Access, shared under a Creative Commons License