6G NTN Waveforms: A Comparison of OTFS, AFDM and OCDM in LEO Satellite Channels

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Hauptverfasser: Mandal, Baidyanath, Chandra, Aniruddha, Roka, Rastislav, Wojtun, Jarosław, Kelner, Jan, Ziołkowski, Cezary
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2026
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author Mandal, Baidyanath
Chandra, Aniruddha
Roka, Rastislav
Wojtun, Jarosław
Kelner, Jan
Ziołkowski, Cezary
author_facet Mandal, Baidyanath
Chandra, Aniruddha
Roka, Rastislav
Wojtun, Jarosław
Kelner, Jan
Ziołkowski, Cezary
contents Sixth generation (6G) physical layer (PHY) is evolving beyond the legacy orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based waveforms. In this paper, we compare the bit error rate (BER) performance of three beyond-OFDM waveforms, namely, orthogonal time-frequency-space (OTFS) modulation, affine frequency division multiplexing (AFDM), and orthogonal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM), which are particularly suitable for the highly mobile non-terrestrial network (NTN) vertical of 6G. In order to characterize the effect of mobility and Doppler shift in low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, we performed BER comparisons over four different NTN tapped-delay-line (TDL) models, TDL-A, TDL-B, TDL-C, and TDL-D, as specified in the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) technical report TR 38.811. After channel equalization, a minimum mean squared error with successive detection (MMSE-SD) algorithm was used to enhance the BER performance. It was found that AFDM and OTFS consistently outperformed OCDM across all TDL models, while AFDM performed better than OTFS in TDL-B and TDL-C, in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. The complete simulation framework is made available as an open-source code for quick validation and further development.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_09834
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle 6G NTN Waveforms: A Comparison of OTFS, AFDM and OCDM in LEO Satellite Channels
Mandal, Baidyanath
Chandra, Aniruddha
Roka, Rastislav
Wojtun, Jarosław
Kelner, Jan
Ziołkowski, Cezary
Networking and Internet Architecture
Sixth generation (6G) physical layer (PHY) is evolving beyond the legacy orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based waveforms. In this paper, we compare the bit error rate (BER) performance of three beyond-OFDM waveforms, namely, orthogonal time-frequency-space (OTFS) modulation, affine frequency division multiplexing (AFDM), and orthogonal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM), which are particularly suitable for the highly mobile non-terrestrial network (NTN) vertical of 6G. In order to characterize the effect of mobility and Doppler shift in low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, we performed BER comparisons over four different NTN tapped-delay-line (TDL) models, TDL-A, TDL-B, TDL-C, and TDL-D, as specified in the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) technical report TR 38.811. After channel equalization, a minimum mean squared error with successive detection (MMSE-SD) algorithm was used to enhance the BER performance. It was found that AFDM and OTFS consistently outperformed OCDM across all TDL models, while AFDM performed better than OTFS in TDL-B and TDL-C, in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. The complete simulation framework is made available as an open-source code for quick validation and further development.
title 6G NTN Waveforms: A Comparison of OTFS, AFDM and OCDM in LEO Satellite Channels
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09834