An Improved Technique to Reduce Peak to Average
Power Ratio in OFDM Systems Using
Gold/Hadamard Codes with Selective Mapping
Namitha A. S. and Sameer S. M.
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology Calicut, Kerala, India
Email: namitha.as@gmail.com, sameer@nitc.ac.in
AbstractDespite its many advantages for high data rate
transmission over frequency selective channels, one of the chal-
lenging issues faced by orthogonal frequency division multi-
plexing (OFDM) system is its high peak to average power
ratio (PAPR). Selective mapping (SLM) is an efcient technique
to reduce PAPR in OFDM without causing signal distortion.
However SLM has high system complexity since it requires large
number of inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) operations.
And also it demands the transmission of side information for
each data block which results in huge bandwidth overhead. In
this paper, we propose an improved SLM technique with either
Gold or Hadamard code which ensures low system complexity
to achieve the same PAPR reduction performance as that of
conventional SLM. Also the proposed SLM method promises
superior PAPR reduction compared to that of conventional SLM
for identical system complexities. Moreover, the proposed SLM
approach needs less side information to be send to the receiver
resulting in improved bandwidth efciency. Simulation studies
show that considerable reduction in PAPR than conventional
SLM method is achieved for identical number of multiplying
phase sequences. The effect of non-linear distortion caused by
high PAPR is also studied and the proposed method is shown
to ensure linear operation over a large dynamic range of high
power amplier (HPA) in an OFDM transmitter.
Index TermsOrthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM), peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), high power am-
plier (HPA), complementary cumulative distribution function
(CCDF), selective mapping method (SLM)
I. I NTRODUCTION
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is
a very attractive transmission technique for high data rate
wireless communication systems like digital audio and video
broadcasting (DAB and DVB), high denition television
(HDTV), wireless local area network (WLAN) and world
wide interoperabilbiy for microwave access (WiMAX). The
key technology for the long term evolution advanced (LTE-
A) based fourth generation cellular standards is also OFDM.
This technology has many attractive features like efcient
transmission in frequency selective fading environment, high
spectral efciency, high data rate support, simplied channel
equalization, immunity to inter-symbol interference (ISI), etc.
One of the most challenging issues in OFDM implementation
is its high peak to average power ratio (PAPR).
The OFDM signal is generated using inverse fast Fourier
978-1-4799-4665-5/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE
transform (IFFT) operation. It gives output as the sum of
independently modulated data. If the complex sinusoids add
up in the same phase, it will create large peak values and
hence high PAPR. In the front end of the transmitter, a high
power amplier (HPA) is used and the high peaks due to
IFFT causes non-linear distortion to the transmitted signal.
High PAPR causes clipping of the OFDM signal due to the
saturation of the HPA and this produces both in-band and out-
of-band distortions [1].
Many PAPR reduction techniques are available in the lit-
erature for OFDM systems. Computational complexity, power
constraints, data rate and the bit-error rate performance are
some of the concerns associated with them. PAPR reduction
techniques can be broadly classied into two main cate-
gories: Signal distortion techniques and probabilistic tech-
niques. Some signal distortion methods are clipping [2],
peak windowing, peak cancellation [3], and companding [4].
Most important probabilistic methods for PAPR reduction
are selective mapping (SLM) technique [5], partial transmit
sequence (PTS) method [6], coding method [7], shifting with
nullsubcarriers [8], etc.
SLM is a distortionless method which provides a noticeable
reduction in PAPR [9]. But it has high computational com-
plexity due to large number of IFFT operations. The basic
idea of the SLM method is to generate a set of different
representations of the same information and transmit the one
which has the lowest PAPR. The SLM method demands side
information to be send along with the modied data block.
PTS method is another distortionless technique for the
reduction of PAPR. But it consists of an optimization part
which introduces search complexity. Coding is another way to
reduce the PAPR in OFDM signals. The idea of coding is to
select those code words which minimize the PAPR for trans-
mission. Shifting with null subcarrier is another distortionless
method in which the data carriers are shifted with the null
carriers inherent in the guard band of the system in such a
way to reduce PAPR. These techniques require high system
complexity since they need to nd the PAPR of same OFDM
symbol several times.
In this paper, we explain the use of either Gold or Hadamard
codes with SLM so as to provide a much better PAPR reduc-
tion performance or computational complexity reduction as per
the requirement of the system. In the proposed SLM method,
we randomly choose a few columns of Gold or Hadamard
matrix as phase sequences for point by point multiplication
with the OFDM input sequence. The index of column in Gold
or Hadamard matrix that we have chosen for multiplication
only needs to be transmitted to the receiver in order to retrieve
the data signal as an identical Gold or Hadamard matrix
can be easily generated at the receiver. As compared to the
conventional SLM where an N bit sequence is considered as
side information for each OFDM data block, the modied
SLM method improves the bandwidth efciency of the system
tremendously. And also, the proposed technique provides
either a high PAPR reduction performance at the same system
complexity or reduced system complexity at the same PAPR
reduction performance compared to the conventional SLM
method.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
OFDM system model. In Section III, the PAPR metric for
OFDM signal and its performance measure are explained. We
describe the conventional SLM in Section IV. The proposed
SLM method is presented in Section V. In Section VI, sim-
ulations results are discussed. The conclusion of the paper is
provided in Section VII.
II. OFDM S YSTEM M ODEL
In OFDM, serial binary input data is rst modulated with
any baseband modulation technique. This baseband modulated
data stream is then converted into parallel data blocks by serial
to parallel converter (S/P). Fig. 1. shows the block diagram of
OFDM transmitter.
Input Base
band IFFT
Modulation
S/P P/S
data
PAPR
Reduction
Techniques
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the baseband OFDM transmitter
Initially the input data vector is given to IFFT block. The
IFFT operation generates OFDM signal and transforms the
frequency domain signal into time domain. PAPR reduction
techniques can be applied before or after the IFFT block since
the high peaks are generated by the IFFT operation. Cyclic
prex (CP) is added after IFFT operation [10].
The discrete time OFDM signal of N subcarriers without
CP can be expressed as
(1)
where are the data symbols modulated onto the OFDM
subcarriers and N is the number of subcarriers.
III. PAPR PROBLEM IN OFDM
PAPR is the ratio of the maximum power of a given OFDM
symbol to the average power [10] of OFDM symbol. The
PAPR of the transmitted signal is given by
(2)
where is given by (1) and is the average
power.
PAPR is a function of the input data. Since the input data is a
random variable, PAPR is also a random variable. By knowing
the amplitude distribution of the OFDM signal, it is possible
to nd the probability that the instantaneous power is above
a particular threshold value. This is calculated by nding the
complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) for
different PAPR threshold values.
A. CCDF
CCDF is conventionally used as a performance measure to
nd the efciency of a PAPR reduction technique. It can be
dened as the probability that the PAPR of an OFDM data
block is greater than a particular threshold value as given
below
(3)
where is the dened threshold value and stands
for probability.
The cumulative distribution function (CDF) describes the
probability that the random variable PAPR will take a value
less than or equal to the dened amplitude threshold level of
an OFDM symbol.
Add Output
Cyclic
IV. C ONVENTIONAL SLM METHOD
Prex data
In conventional SLM technique, several modied data
blocks are generated by multiplying the original data block
with some random scrambling sequences [9]. A number of se-
quences that represent the same data signal are generated using
phase sequences consisting of different rotation factors. When
it is multiplied with the original data block, phase factors in
these random phase sequences rotate the phase of the original
signal in such a way as to reduce the PAPR. The number of
such newly generated sequences is called the SLM length and
is denoted by U. Initially U statistically independent modied
sequences which represent the same information are generated
and then forwarded into IFFT operations simultaneously. After
IFFT operation, the modied sequence which have the lowest
PAPR is selected for transmission [11].
Generate U statistically independent phase sequences as
P (4)
where P represents the phase sequence generated to
multiply with the original OFDM symbol and stands for
rotation factor in phase sequence, which is given by
where (5)

with and as in (4) where u=1, 2 ,..., U. In the proposed scheme
(6)
The datablock is multiplied componentwise with each one P h (9)
of different phase sequence P . U different modied data where k is an integer between 1 & N, and the phase sequences
blocks thus obtained are denoted as candidate sequences. All can be represented by
candidate sequences are given to IFFT block to generate

corresponding time domain signals. The PAPR of all time h (10)
domain candidate sequences are found out. Finally, the one
which possesses the lowest PAPR value is transmitted. At the Algorithm for selecting Hadamard codes is given below
receiver, it is necessary to know the phase sequence which is

multiplied with the actual data signal in order to retrieve the step 1 : If u=1, then P h where
original data. This N bit phase sequence is usually sent as side

information for each OFDM data block to the receiver. At the step 2 : If u=2, then P h where
receiver, the candidate sequence is counter rotated based on with
the side information sequence to get back the original data

symbol. step 3 : If u=3, then P h where
with and
V. T HE P ROPOSED SCHEME

Independently generated pseudo random phase sequences step 4 : Continue similar steps upto u=U, then

are used to obtain different candidate sequences in the con- P h where with
ventional SLM. Even though the generation of the phase and
sequences are independent, they can have a fair amount of
correlation between them. Hence the random phase sequences Now we denote U different N point orthogonal inde-
rotate the phase of the original data in a correlated manner pendent vectors selected from the Hadamard matrix as

resulting in poor PAPR reduction performance. If the mul- h h h where for mul-
tiplying sequences are completely orthogonal, there will not tiplying with the data signal to generate the candidate se-
be any correlation between the phase sequences and hence quences.
the phase rotation of the original data block will be in a These orthogonal vectors will minimize the correlation
perfectly orthogonal manner. This will improve the probability property between the candidate sequences so that we can
of achieving a better PAPR reduction with a small number of achieve a much better performance in PAPR reduction than
phase sequences. So in our proposed method, instead of the the conventional SLM method.
pseudo random multiplying sequences, we choose Hadamard The datablock d is multiplied
codes which are perfectly orthogonal or Gold codes which
component-wise with each distinct phase sequence h , i.e.,
have good cross correlation properties as phase sequences P U different candidate sequences can be generated by the
with u=1,2,..,U. Block diagram of the proposed SLM scheme Hadamard product of the data block and phase sequences as
with Gold/Hadamard code is shown in Fig. 2. given below
Here we illustrate the proposed algorithm with Hadamard
code. A Hadamard matrix is a square matrix whose entries are
d d h (11)
either +1 or -1 and whose rows and columns are completely
orthogonal to each other i.e., every two different rows or where d denotes candidate sequence and
columns in the Hadamard matrix represent two perpendicular
vectors. We denote the Hadamard matrix as d h (12)

Each candidate sequence d is converted to time domain

and denoted by d where u=1, 2, ..., U. The PAPR of all
H (7) sequences are found out. The candidate sequence which has
the lowest PAPR value is selected for transmission. Hence the
objective function is formulated as
or alternatively

d

d

(13)
H h h h (8)
where
where h represent the column of the Hadamard matrix

with q=1, 2,..., N. d h



d (14)
In conventional SLM scheme, the number of pseudo-random

phase sequences is denoted by U and can be generated by P d h


d h is average power of the can-
didate sequence. The objective function can be alternatively
written as
d h
d (15)
d h
thus found is selected for
The candidate sequence d
transmission after adding CP and subsequent RF processing.
h
d x
Gold or
h
IFFT
Hadamard d Select
Matrix x canditate
IFFT sequence
h with
minimum
Data
source
S/P
d
d x
PAPR
IFFT
Fig. 2. The proposed SLM method
Gold sequences have good cross-correlation properties and
can be generated from a pair of preferred maximum length
sequences (m-sequence) of the same length [12]. Since the
length of Gold code is odd, we puncture one bit at the end of
each Gold code in order to suit with the IFFT length. Similar
algorithm that we have discussed for SLM with Hadamard
code is followed for the usage of Gold code also.
As mentioned, in the proposed method, we can use either
Gold or Hadamard code as phase sequences to generate
candidate sequences which yield almost same PAPR reduc-
tion performance. With the same SLM length, the proposed
algorithm offers better PAPR reduction performance than the
conventional SLM method. Reduced SLM length is required
for the proposed algorithm in order to obtain the same PAPR
reduction of conventional SLM. As the SLM length reduces,
several IFFT operations can be avoided correspondingly so
that we can claim that our method is computationally efcient.
The value of k (column index) only required to transmit as
side information i.e, the modied SLM method improves the
bandwidth efciency of the system tremendously as compared
to the conventional SLM.
At the receiver side, we can do the reverse process
(component-wise division of the received signal with the
selected column of the Gold or Hadamard matrix that we have
chosen for multiplication) to retrieve the original data block.
VI. S IMULATION R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
The PAPR reduction performance of the proposed SLM
method is investigated by computer simulation of an OFDM
communication system for N=256, N=512 and results are
compared with that of the conventional SLM [5]. The phase
rotation factors of phase sequences P used in the conven-
tional SLM method are randomly chosen from the set ,
i.e., takes value and in (5). The modulation scheme
is assumed to be binary phase shift keying (BPSK). Bit error
rate (BER) performance of the receiver is studied under both
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading
channels apart from the CCDF plots.
0
10
Conventional OFDM with N=256
SLM with random sequence(U=8)
SLM with Hadamard code(U=8)
SLM with Gold code(U=8)
CCDF (Pr[PAPR>PAPR0])
1
10
x
2
10
3
10
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
PAPR0 [dB]
Fig. 3. CCDF of PAPR of OFDM system with the proposed SLM method
with Gold/Hadamard code and its comparison with that of conventional SLM
(N=256) and uncompensated system
Fig. 3 shows the PAPR characteristics of the proposed
SLM method and conventional SLM for N=256. The PAPR
threshold values and CCDF of the PAPR threshold values are
plotted in x and y axis respectively. The CCDF of PAPR
threshold values for OFDM signal with the proposed SLM
method is also compared with that of conventional OFDM
without any PAPR reduction technique apart from comparing
with the PAPR of OFDM system using the conventional SLM.
It can be seen that the proposed method with Gold code and
Hadamard code respectively has 1.5 dB and 1 dB lower PAPR
than the conventional SLM scheme for a CCDF of .
For PAPR0=7.5dB, the CCDF of PAPR for OFDM system
without any PAPR reduction technique is while it is
for OFDM system with the conventional SLM. The
CCDF for same PAPR threshold value for OFDM system with
the proposed SLM with Gold and Hadamard code is reduced
to and respectively as shown in Fig. 3. Hence the
PAPR is minimized more when we use Gold/Hadamard codes
as phase sequences to generate different representations of the
same data.
The performance of the proposed SLM technique with
N=512 is shown in Fig. 4. By using Gold/Hadamard codes,
nearly 1.5 dB reduction in PAPR is obtained than the con-
ventional SLM method where CCDF value is taken as .
For the threshold value PAPR0=7 dB, CCDF of PAPR0 is
nearly for both the conventional OFDM without any PAPR
reduction techniques and OFDM with the conventional SLM.
 0
10
It shows that we can achieve better BER performance by
Conventional OFDM with N=512 the proposed SLM when compared with that of conventional
SLM with random sequence(U=8)
SLM with Hadamard code(U=8) SLM. In Fig. 6, when the signal to noise ratio (SNR) is 8
SLM with Gold code(U=8)
dB, the BER value for conventional SLM is and it is
reduced to for the proposed SLM method.
CCDF (Pr[PAPR>PAPR0])

1
10

0
10
Conventional OFDM without PAPR reduction
Conventional SLM
2
10 1 SLM with Hadamard Sequence
10
SLM with Gold sequence

2
10

3
10

BER
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 3
10
PAPR0 [dB]

4
Fig. 4. CCDF of PAPR of OFDM system with the proposed SLM method 10
with Gold/Hadamard codes and its comparison with that of conventional SLM
(N=512) and uncompensated system
5
10

The CCDF value of the same threshold value for the proposed 10
6

SLM technique is reduced to . snr(dB)
Fig. 5 shows that we can obtain almost the same
PAPR reduction performance using conventional SLM method
with U=12 and proposed SLM technique with U=8. For
CCDF= , PAPR0 for both OFDM system with
proposed SLM method and the conventional SLM. But our
proposed method requires less number of phase sequences
(U=8) and hence less system complexity. This shows that
our method can be congured to possesses less computational
complexity than conventional SLM for the same PAPR reduc-
tion performance or it can achieve a better performance in
PAPR reduction at the same system complexity.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Fig. 6. BER performance of proposed SLM method with Gold/Hadamard
codes and its comparison with that of conventional SLM and uncompensated
system in AWGN channel
Fig. 7 shows the receiver BER performance with the pro-
posed SLM and conventional SLM techniques under Rayleigh
fading channel. With the proposed SLM technique, a BER of
is achieved at an SNR of 22 dB where as conventional
SLM needs 3dB more than that. This shows that the proposed
method outperforms the conventional SLM method.

1
0
10 10
Conventional OFDM with N=512 OFDM without PAPR reduction
SLM with random sequence(U=12)
SLM with hadamard code
SLM with Hadamard code(U=8)
SLM with Gold code(U=8) SLM with Gold code
Conventional SLM
CCDF (Pr[PAPR>PAPR0])

2
1
10 10
BER

3
2
10 10

3 4
10 10
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 5 10 15 20 25 30
PAPR0 [dB]
SNR(dB)

Fig. 5. CCDF of PAPR of OFDM system with the proposed SLM Fig. 7. BER performance of proposed SLM method with Gold/Hadamard
method with Gold/Hadamard codes (U=8) and its comparison with that of codes and its comparison with that of conventional SLM and uncompensated
conventional SLM (U=12) and uncompensated system system in Rayleigh channel

BER performance for the proposed SLM with HPA typically introduces nonlinearity to high amplitude
Gold/Hadamard code in AWGN channel is shown in Fig. 6. values of the input signal when it exceeds the saturation
voltage of the amplier. It is necessary to decrease the peaks
of the OFDM signal in order to reduce the nonlinear distortion
of the signal and to improve the power efciency of the
RF amplier. We used Rapps model [1] to characterize the
nonlinearity of solid-state power amplier (SSPA) and created
a MATLAB simulink model for it.
The Rapps model is congured to the following parameters:
knee factor(P) that controls smoothness of transition from
the linear region to the saturation region of the input output
(I/O) characteristic curve = 3, gain of the amplier = 20
and saturation voltage = 0.4. So, this SSPA model amplies
the input signals with voltage less than 0.4 linearly and it
introduces nonlinearity when the input signal voltage exceeds
0.4. Here, the outputs of the conventional SLM and the
proposed SLM are given as input signals to the simulink
model. After introducing nonlinearity to both signals by the
simulink model are shown in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9 respectively.
Fig. 8 shows the I/O characteristics of the SSPA where the
OFDM signal with conventional SLM is given as input. We
got linear amplication until the input voltage is equal to 0.4
as shown in the graph. When the input voltage exceeds 0.4,
nonlinearity gets introduced, i.e., proper amplication fails and
the amplier enters into saturation region.
The nonlinear effects is reduced where the OFDM signal
with the proposed SLM method is given as input to the SSPA
model as shown in Fig. 9. Here, the I/O characteristics of
the SSPA is linear in all range of input voltages since the
input voltages are distributed within the saturation voltage by
reducing the PAPR. It is clear from the simulation results that
by decreasing the PAPR, we can improve the power efciency
of SSPA.
Conventional SLM
8 signals, IEEE Trans. Broadcast., vol. 58, no. 4, pp. 677-884.
6 [5] R. W. Bauml, R. F. Fischer and J. B. Huber, Reducing the peak-
V out
4 mapping, IET Electronics Lett.,vol. 32, no. 22, pp. 2056-2057,
2 with New Phase Sequence for PAPR Reduction in OFDM
0 2, pp. 366-371, May 2011.
0 0.2 0.4
V in
Fig. 8. Output of conventional SLM after introducing nonlinearity in HPA
using Rapp model in simulink
VII. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a new SLM method using
Gold/Hadamard codes as phase sequences. Our proposed
method has been shown to yield much lower PAPR than the
conventional SLM method for the same system complexity.
Also, it has a lower computational complexity when cong-
ured to achieve the same performance of the conventional
SLM technique. Our method promises another advantage that
Hadamard SLM
10
V out
5
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4
V in
Fig. 9. Output of proposed SLM after introducing nonlinearity in HPA using
Rapp model in simulink
it demands very low side information to be send to receiver
as compared to the conventional SLM method. Superiority
of the proposed technique is validated through CCDF plots,
receiver BER performance graphs and I/O characteristics of
HPA. Since high PAPR continues to be an important challenge
in OFDM implementation, new methods like the one proposed
in this work are highly relevant.
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