Cyclic prefix

In telecommunications, the term cyclic prefix refers to the prefixing of a symbol with a repetition of the end. The receiver is typically configured to discard the cyclic prefix samples, but the cyclic prefix serves two purposes:

• It provides a guard interval to eliminate intersymbol interference from the previous symbol.
• It repeats the end of the symbol so the linear convolution of a frequency-selective multipath channel can be modeled as circular convolution, which in turn may transform to the frequency domain via a discrete Fourier transform. This approach accommodates simple frequency domain processing, such as channel estimation and equalization.

For the cyclic prefix to serve its objectives, it must have a length at least equal to the length of the multipath channel. The concept of a cyclic prefix is traditionally associated with OFDM systems, however the cyclic prefix is now also used in single carrier systems to improve the robustness to multipath propagation.