  In this paper, we identified the challenges and requirements for the waveform
design of the fifth generation mobile communication networks (5G) and compared
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based waveforms with Filter
Bank Multicarrier (FBMC) based ones. Recently it has been shown that
Quadrature-Amplitude Modulation (QAM) transmission and reception can be enabled
in FBMC by using multiple prototype filters, resulting in a new waveform:
QAM-FBMC. Here, the transceiver architecture and signal model of QAM-FBMC are
presented and channel estimation error and RF impairment, e.g., phase noise,
are modeled. In addition, initial evaluation is made in terms of out-of-band
(OOB) emission and complexity. The simulation results show that QAM-FBCM can
achieve the same BER performance as cyclic-prefix (CP) OFDM without spectrum
efficiency reduction due to the adding of CP. Different equalization schemes
are evaluated and the effect of channel estimation error is investigated.
Moreover, effects of the phase noise are evaluated and QAM-FBMC is shown to be
robust to the phase noise.
