On the Diversity of Uncoded OTFS Modulation in Doubly-Dispersive Channels

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) is a 2-dimensional (2D) modulation technique designed in the delay-Doppler domain. A key premise behind OTFS is the transformation of a time varying multipath channel into an almost non-fading 2D channel in delay-Doppler domain such that all symbols in a transmission frame experience the same channel gain. It has been suggested in the recent literature that OTFS can extract full diversity in the delay-Doppler domain, where full diversity refers to the number of multipath components separable in either the delay or Doppler dimension, but without a formal analysis. In this paper, we present a formal analysis of the diversity achieved by OTFS modulation along with supporting simulations. Specifically, we prove that the asymptotic diversity order of OTFS (as SNR $\rightarrow \infty$) is one. However, in the finite SNR regime, potential for a higher order diversity is witnessed before the diversity one regime takes over. Also, the diversity one regime starts at lower BER values for increased frame sizes. We also propose a phase rotation scheme for OTFS using transcendental numbers. We show that OTFS with this proposed scheme extracts the full diversity in the delay-Doppler domain.