Efficient PAPR for OFDM and CI/OFDM Systems
with Iterative Clipping
Tomohiro Noguchi, Khoirul Anwar, Masato Saito and Minoru Okada
Graduate School of Information Science, Nara Institute of Science and Technology
8916-5 Takayama, Ikoma, Nara, 630-0192 JAPAN
Tel: +81-743-72-5348, Fax: +81-743-72-5349
E-mail: {tomohiro-n, anwar-k, saito, mokada}@is.naist.jp
Abstract—This paper proposes a design framework based on
efficient peak-to-average power (PAPR) for orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) and carrier interferometry OFDM
(CI/OFDM) systems with iterative clipping. In this paper, we
utilize the efficient PAPR which is defined as the PAPR minimizing
the total degradation (TD) to determine the optimum clipping
ratio (CR) considering the effects of clipping and a solid state PA
(SSPA). We evaluate the TD of OFDM and CI/OFDM systems
with iterative clipping with comparing the performance by those
systems without clipping. For QPSK symbols it is found that the
efficient PAPR is 6 dB and TD gain compared with the system
without iterative clipping is 1.3 dB in OFDM systems. Further
gain can be obtained for CI/OFDM systems, that is, efficient PAPR
is 4 dB and the TD gain is 3.2 dB.
I. I NTRODUCTION
The orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
system is a candidate for next generation wireless commu-
nication because of its many benefits such as robustness
against frequency selective fading and high spectral efficiency.
However, OFDM systems still have a major drawback in
high peak power as a consequence of superposition of many
subcarriers with random phases.
Many techniques have been studied to reduce the peak-
to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the OFDM system as
summarized in [1]. The PAPR reduction techniques include
clipping and filtering (CAF) [2], [3], tone reservation [4],
selected mapping [5] and Carrier Interferometry (CI) OFDM
[6]–[8]. Among them, CI is a PAPR reduction technique
that does not cause signal distortion. However, the PAPR of
CI/OFDM signals is not low enough to pass solid-state power
amplifier (SSPA) with sufficiently small signal distortion [8]–
[10]. This paper focuses on the PAPR reduction of OFDM
and CI/OFDM signals using iterative CAF because CAF is
the simplest method for PAPR reduction. However, clipping
causes distortion that can be viewed as another source of noise
that falls into both in-band and out-of-band of the desired
signals. In-band noise can not be reduced by filtering and
results in bit error rate (BER) performance degradation. Since
the criterion evaluation of only PAPR is not sufficient for
practical applications, it should consider the effects of clipping
and the nonlinearity of amplifier simultaneously.
In [11], it is shown that the efficient PAPR is defined as the
PAPR which minimizes BER. However, BER is not necessary
to be minimized if the values satisfy a certain required quality.
978-1-4244-3397-1/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE
525
Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on July 21, 2009 at 08:03 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
In addition it does not show the relation between the clipping
ratio (CR) and the PAPR. Therefore, this paper modifies the
efficient PAPR from the viewpoint of practical applications,
and we arrange the definition to minimize total degradation
(TD) of the system while satisfying required BER and to
consider the effects of both clipping and the SSPA.
Our previous studies reveal that each BER performance
of the systems with clipping can be improved when the
best iteration number of iterative clipping is performed to
attain the same PAPR target [10], [12]. It is shown that
the iterative clipping is also effective for improving the total
degradation (TD) while minimizing the out-of-band radiation.
The discovered best iteration number for OFDM is 2 iterations
and that for CI/OFDM is 3 iterations [10], [12]. Those studies,
however, do not show the efficient PAPR for the efficient
iteration number of 2 or 3 times. The efficient PAPR is
important for determining the CR and finally improving the
overall performances.
In this study, we propose a design framework of OFDM
and CI/OFDM systems with clipping and SSPA using a novel
efficient PAPR which minimizes TD. We show improvements
of both the efficient PAPR and TD compared with those of
OFDM system based on the specification of wireless LAN
(IEEE 802.11a [13]), and CI/OFDM system in the presence
of SSPA (Class A and Class B).
The results show that the performance with the proposed
design improves the current performance by 1.3 dB and 3.2
dB in terms of TD. In addition, the efficiency of SSPA can be
improved by about 8 % and 18 % for OFDM and CI/OFDM
systems, respectively.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section II
illustrates the system models. Section III describes the method
for observing the efficient PAPR. Section IV shows numerical
results. Finally, Section V concludes this paper.
II. S YSTEM MODEL
Figure 1 shows OFDM and CI/OFDM systems model over
the nonlinear channel. Figure 1(a) and (b) illustrate the block
diagrams of transmitter and receiver models, respectively.
At the transmitter, input data are mapped onto quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM) symbols. In this paper, we
consider quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) constellation.
The mapped data symbols are converted to the parallel format
 2.5
Transmitter
Modulation CI GI CI/OFDM,
(QPSK) IFFT Clipping Filter Insertion SSPA
Spreading Iteration : 1
only for CI/OFDM 2
CI/OFDM,
(a) OFDM and CI/OFDM transmitter Iteration : 3

Clipping Ratio
1.5
GI FFT Equalization CI Demodulation
Removal Despreading (QPSK) OFDM,
Receiver
Iteration : 2
only for CI/OFDM
1
(b) OFDM and CI/OFDM receiver
OFDM,
Fig. 1. OFDM and CI/OFDM system models over the nonlinear channel Iteration : 1

0.5
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
s(n) s(t)
GI PAPR (dB)
IFFT
Insertion
~
s(n)
Fig. 3. Clipping ratio versus PAPR for QPSK using iteration in the presence
Filtering Clipping
of SSPA

FFT
-
s(t)
Fig. 2. Block diagram of the iterative clipping method
by a serial-to-parallel converter. Then, the data are trans-
formed from frequency to time domain by inverse fast Fourier
transform (IFFT). Because OFDM signals tend to have high
PAPR, clipping and filtering is then performed to reduce the
PAPR. Finally, guard interval (GI) is inserted. Before the
transmission, the signal is amplified using the SSPA.
At the receiver, first GI is removed, then the signal is
converted from time to frequency domain by fast Fourier
transform (FFT). After the equalization, the data are converted
from parallel-to-serial format. Finally, we obtain the data by
demodulating the signal using QAM demodulation.
For the case of CI/OFDM, the data are spread by the CI
codes before the IFFT at the transmitter. At the receiver, the
outputs of FFT are despread by the complex conjugate of CI
codes before demodulation.
A. Iterative clipping model
Clipping is the simplest method to reduce the PAPR. How-
ever, the BER may increase significantly when the clipping
ratio (CR) is inappropriately low [3]. Here, CR is defined as
A
CR = , (1)
ρ
where A is the maximum allowable amplitude and ρ is the
root mean square (rms) of the amplitude of the OFDM or
CI/OFDM signals.
Iterative clipping clips the signals of an OFDM symbol more
than once. Figure 2 shows the block diagram of the iterative
clipping method. In the figure, t and n are sample indexes
of time and frequency, respectively. We calculate the ρ of
rms before clipping in each iteration. By clipping block, the
amplitude of s(t) is clipped as

A, (A ≥ |s(t)|)
|s̄(t)| = (2)
|s(t)|, (A < |s(t)|),
where s̄(t) is a clipped signal. After FFT is performed to s̄(t),
we obtain the clipped signal in the frequency domain s̃(n).
To remove the out-of-band spectrum, filtering is performed to
s̃(n). In the next iteration, IFFT/FFT conversions and CAF
are applied to s̃(n) instead of s(n). After the predetermined
number of iterations, GI is inserted to the output signal of
IFFT. Then the OFDM signals are transmitted to the power
amplifier.
Figure 3 plots the relation between the clipping ratio and the
corresponding PAPR by using iterative clipping in the presence
of SSPA. In Fig. 3, the results confirm that PAPR increases
as CR increases. The PAPR of both OFDM and CI/OFDM
can be improved by iterative clipping with several iteration
numbers though the CRs are equal. As shown in Fig. 3, for
one iteration, the PAPR of OFDM can not be reduced less
than 6 dB, while the CI/OFDM is 4 dB.
B. SSPA model
An SSPA is applied at the transmitter end to amplify OFDM
and CI/OFDM signals. The SSPA has the nonlinear input-

526

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on July 21, 2009 at 08:03 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 TABLE I 9
S IMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameters Values

Modulation Scheme QPSK

8
Number of Subcarriers 52

Total Degradation (dB)

FFT Size 64 7
GI Length 16 (25 %)
Oversampling Factor 2
6
Channel AWGN
Clipping Ratio (CR) 0.78 ∼ 3.2
OFDM : 1, 2 5
Iteration Number
CI/OFDM : 1, 3 OFDM, OFDM,
Iteration : 2 Iteration : 1
PAPR [dB] 3.5 ∼ 10.5 4
IBO [dB] 3.5 ∼ 10.5

3
5 6 7 8 9
output relationship shown as [9], [10] PAPR (dB)
s
A(s) = 1 , (3)
 2p
2p Fig. 4. Performance of total degradation for several PAPR in OFDM system
s
1 + Asat
9
where, s is the amplitude of input signals, p is the smoothness
parameter of the transition from the linear region to the satu-
ration region (we selected p = 4 which is suitable for Wireless 8
LAN application), and Asat is the saturated amplitude at the
output of the power amplifier. The output back-off (OBO) to
Total Degradation (dB)

let the signal operates in the linear region of SSPA is expressed 7

as  
P 
sat
OBO = 10 log10 dB, (4) CI/OFDM, CI/OFDM,
P̃out 6 Iteration : 3 Iteration : 1
where the Psat is saturated output power, and P̃out is the
output power at the operating point. 5
III. E FFICIENT PAPR
In this study, efficient PAPR is defined as the PAPR where 4
the TD is the minimum. We measured SNR and OBO of each
PAPR for calculating the TD. The TD in this paper is defined
as the total of SNRSSPA (dB) and the OBO of SSPA as 3
  3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5 6 6.5 7 7.5
TD = SNRSSPA − SNRlinear + OBO dB, (5) PAPR (dB)
where SNRSSPA is the required SNR to ensure 10−3 of BER
in the presence of SSPA, SNRlinear (dB) is the required SNR Fig. 5. Performance of total degradation for several PAPR in CI/OFDM
system
satisfying BER of 10−3 by systems without clipping and
SSPA.
IV. N UMERICAL R ESULTS the white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel without error
The parameters used for BER performance evaluation are correction coding.
shown in Table I for a Wireless LAN application. The number The considered PAPR is in a range of 3.5 ∼ 10.5 dB which
of subcarriers is 52 to demonstrate the Wireless LAN system. is obtained by adjusting CR (the range of CR is 0.78 ∼ 3.2) to
We use oversampling factor of 2 to observe efficiently the meet the PAPR value. In this paper, the input-back-off (IBO) is
signal resolution, and GI length is set to 25 % of the OFDM assumed to be equal to the PAPR. The OBO is then measured
symbol length. The overall simulation is performed in additive using (4) at the output of SSPA.

527

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on July 21, 2009 at 08:03 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 TABLE II
I MPROVEMENT BY THE EFFICIENT PAPR FOR OFDM SYSTEM V. C ONCLUSIONS
OFDM with OFDM with An efficient PAPR is proposed to find the minimum TD of
Conventional Proposed Improvement OFDM and CI/OFDM systems with iterative clipping over
design design
the nonlinear SSPA while satisfying required BER. It is
PAPR 8 dB 6 dB 2 dB shown that TD can be reduced by using iterative clipping as
Efficiency of
20 % 25 % 5%
compared with the clipping without iteration in both OFDM
SSPA (Class A) and CI/OFDM. The results confirm that the efficient PAPR is
Efficiency of
SSPA (Class B)
32 % 40 % 8% 6 dB and 7 dB when iterations are 2 and 1 for the OFDM
system. For the CI/OFDM, the efficient PAPR is 4 dB and
Total Degradation 7.1 dB 5.8 dB 1.3 dB
4.5 dB when iterations are 3 and 1. From the comparison
with the current OFDM and CI/OFDM systems, the proposed
designs have three advantages: lower PAPR, higher efficiency
TABLE III and lower degradation. These results are important for system
I MPROVEMENT BY THE EFFICIENT PAPR FOR CI/OFDM SYSTEM
designers to determine suitable efficient PAPR of OFDM and
CI/OFDM with CI/OFDM with CI/OFDM systems with iterative clipping over the nonlinear
Conventional Proposed Improvement
design design SSPA.
PAPR 8 dB 4 dB 4 dB R EFERENCES
Efficiency of [1] S. H. Han and J. H. Lee, “An overview of peak-to-average power
20 % 32 % 12 %
SSPA (Class A) ratio reduction techniques for multicarrier transmission,” IEEE Wireless
Efficiency of Commun., pp. 56–65, April 2005.
32 % 50 % 18 %
SSPA (Class B) [2] H. Ochiai and H. Imai, “Performance analysis of deliberately clipped
Total Degradation 6.8 dB 3.6 dB 3.2 dB OFDM signals,” IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 50, pp. 89–101, Jan. 2002.
[3] X. L. and L. J. C. Jr., “Effect of clippipng and filtering on the
performance of OFDM,” IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 2, pp. 131–133,
May 1998.
[4] J. Tellado, Multicarrier Modulation with Low PAR: Applications to DSL
and Wireless. Kluwer Academic Press, 2000.
[5] R. W. Bauml, R. F. H. Fisher, and J. B. Huber, “Reduction the peak-to-
With the effective iteration number of 2 and 3 for OFDM average power ratio of multicarrier modulation by selected mapping,”
and CI/OFDM [12], we determine the efficient PAPR when Elec. Lett., vol. 32, pp. 2056–2057, Oct. 1996.
TD is minimum. [6] D. A. Wiegandt, Z. Wu, and C. R. Nassar, “High-throughput,
high-performance OFDM via pseudo-orthogonal carrier interferometry
Figures 4 and 5 show the performance of TD for several spreading codes,” IEEE Trans. on Commun., vol. 51, Jul. 2003.
PAPR in OFDM and CI/OFDM. By inspecting Fig. 4, we can [7] Z. Wu, D. A. Wiegandt, and C. R. Nassar, “High-performance 64-
QAM OFDM via carrier interferometry spreading codes,” IEEE VTC-
conclude that efficient PAPR is 6 dB and 7 dB when iterations Fall 2003, pp. 561–577, 2003.
are 2 and 1 for the OFDM system. For the CI/OFDM, the [8] K. Anwar and H. Yamamoto, “A new design of carrier interferometry
efficient PAPR is 4 dB and 4.5 dB when iterations are 3 and OFDM with FFT as spreading code,” IEEE Radio and Wireless Sympo-
sium (RWS 2006), pp. 543–546, January 2006.
1. TD of OFDM is 5.8 and 6.9 while TD of CI/OFDM is 3.6 [9] J. Tellado, “Multicarrier modulation with low PAR application to DSL
and 4.6. and wireless,” Kluwer Academic Pub., 2000.
[10] K. Anwar, Peak power reduction for multicarrier systems in satellite
Table II shows the results of the efficiency of the design and radio communications. PhD thesis, Nara Institute of Science and
by the conventional and proposed schemes for OFDM. The Technology, 2008.
[11] D. Wulich, “Definition of efficient PAPR in OFDM,” IEEE Commun.
conventionally designed OFDM scheme in IEEE 802.11a Lett., vol. 9, pp. 832–834, Sep. 2005.
Wireless LAN standard has PAPR = 8 dB. As a consequence, [12] K. Anwar, T. Hara, and M. Okada, “An effective iterative clipping for
this design causes the efficiency of SSPA to be 20 % (Class A) coded CI/OFDM systems over the nonlinearity,” IEEE PIMRC 2008,
Sep. 2008.
and 32 % (Class B). With the proposed design, the efficiency [13] IEEE Std. 802.11a, Wireless Medium Access Control (MAC) and Phys-
of SSPA can be increased to 25 % (Class A) and 40 % (Class ical Layer (PHY) Specifications: High-speed Physical Layer Extension
B) because of the reduced PAPR to 6 dB. Moreover, it has the in the 5-GHz Band. IEEE, 1999.
design obtains better TD of 5.8 dB compared with that of 7.1
dB by the conventional design.
For the case of CI/OFDM, the results are shown in Table
III. The conventionally designed CI/OFDM scheme in the
assumption of IEEE 802.11a Wireless LAN standard has
PAPR = 8 dB. Like the conventionally designed OFDM, the
efficiency of SSPA is 20 % for Class A and 32 % for Class
B. With the proposed design, the efficiency of SSPA can be
increased to 32 % (Class A) and 50 % (Class B) because of
the reduced PAPR of 4 dB. Moreover the proposed design
achieves 3.2 dB gain of TD

528

Authorized licensed use limited to: VELLORE INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY. Downloaded on July 21, 2009 at 08:03 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.