A TECHNIQUE FOR MITIGATION OF BOTH NONLINEAR AND FREQUENCY OFFSET EFFECTS IN

OFDM-BASED SYSTEMS
Natalia Y. Ermolova, Member, IEEE

Abstract: In this paper, we emphasize the necessity of component of the coded signal separately when an
using crest factor (CF) reduction methods in the ICI SCT is applied. In the proposed scheme, for
combination with inter-carrier interference self- producing a required output power, each HPA may
cancellation techniques (ICI SCT) that employ operate at larger back-off values , i.e. in a quasi-
correlation coding in the frequency domain. We present linear mode. Thus, this technique actually doesn’t
a technique that jointly mitigates nonlinear and affect ICI-cancellation ability of the ICI SCT. At the
frequency offset effects in OFDM-based communication
systems. We suggest to modify ICI SCT by separate
same time, it does cancel CF enhancement.
processing each component of the coded signal at the
transmitter. Such a modification actually doesn’t affect
ICI cancellation ability of the ICI SCT while cancels the
effects of crest factor (CF) enhancement observed after II. USING PARALLEL PROCESSING FOR
application of ICI SCT. MITIGATION OF NONLINEAR EFFECTS IN
Index Terms: Frequency offset, intercarrier ICI SELF-CANCELLATION SCHEMES
interference, nonlinear high power amplifier, OFDM.
A. Signal model
Samples of an OFDM signal
I. INTRODUCTION
sn = s (t ) t = nt ( nt s are sampling instants,
s

Two major drawbacks of OFDM systems are large n = 0,... N − 1 ) are obtained by the application of the
envelope fluctuations of the signal (that are inherent inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) to N
to any composite signal) and misalignments in information symbols Ak The last Ng samples of
subcarrier frequencies that always present in real
each symbol ( where Ng exceeds the maximal delay
systems. The latter effect is inherent to mobile
spread) are put at its beginning and form the so
channels due to Doppler shifts but it may be also
called guard interval that preserves the symbol from
observed in static channels because of any
inter-symbol and inter-carrier interferences. Thus
misalignment in the transmitter or/and receiver
generators. Large envelope fluctuations result in signal N −1 2π
1
A e
jnk
distortions by a high power amplifier (HPA) at the sn = k
N , n = − N g ,...N − 1 . (1)
transmitter that is inherently nonlinear with respect to N k =0
signals with amplitude variations, while a loss of the
orthogonality between subcarriers due to frequency
B. Effects of correlation coding techniques on
misalignments causes intercarrier interference (ICI)
crest-factor of the original signal
that aggravates the error probability performance of
the system.
The coding techniques suggested in [1] - [2] are
Usually these two effects are studied separately as
simple and effective ways for cancellation of ICI
well methods for their mitigation are elaborated also
caused by frequency offsets. Their application,
separately. Meanwhile, methods combating the
however, results in re-distribution of the signal power
harmful impact of only one effect can aggravate that
and thus the resulted CF should be of a concern
of another. Such are ICI self-cancellation techniques
because of the HPA at the transmitter. Correlative
(ICI SCT) based on correlation coding in the
coding in the frequency domain results in power
frequency domain (see, e.g. [1] - [2]), which have
shaping of the original OFDM signal. This
been proposed as simple and effective
observation was made, e.g. in [2] and [4] but in this
countermeasures against ICI caused by frequency
paper we present a formula for the complementary
offsets. It is well known that application of these
cumulative distribution function CCDF (CF) and
techniques affects the CF of the signal (see, e.g.[2] -
upper bounds for the resulting CF.
[4]). The statistical distribution of the CF gets worse
Let the correlation polynomial be
and thus nonlinear distortions may be enhanced.
Since nonlinear effects are always observed in real
systems, application of IC SCT should be I −1

accompanied by a CF reduction technique. F ( D) =  fi D i (2)

i =0
In this paper, we suggest to process each
This work was supported by the Academy of Finland and
Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation

978-1-4244-3861-7/09/$25.00 ©2009 IEEE 1689

where D is the delay operator, f i are the correlation Proposition: If the CF of the original OFDM
signal is restricted, i.e.
polynomial coefficients, and I is the code length.
The samples of the resulting signal r(n) are
CF0 ≤ C (7)
obtained by the IDFT application to the convolution
of the coefficients of the correlation polynomial with
the original signal and based on the IDFT properties then after correlation coding with the correlation
we can write (if the edge effects are negligible, that is polynomial (2) the CF is upper bounded by
valid for practical systems)

r ( n ) ≅ N × IDFT {Ak }× IDFT { f i }.

I −1
(3)
f i
(8)
CFr ≤ C × i =0
It follows from (3) that correlative coding results in I −1

f
2
multiplication of the original signal by a deterministic i
i =0
function g(t) with the samples defined by
N × IDFT { f i } . In order to derive the cumulative
distribution function (CCDF) of the resulting crest
factor CFr , we take into account that the event The second factor on the RHS of (8) defines the
maximal increase of the original CF after correlative
{CFr ≥ C } is that s(t ) max is multiplied by a factor coding because its nominator characterizes the
maximal possible increase of the signal amplitude
equal to (or larger than) C × d / s( t ) max (where
while the denominator characterizes the increase of
I −1
Pin .

2
d= fi is the factor that characterizes the
i =0 If repetition coding is applied, the signal power is
doubled and from (6) we obtain that
change of the Pin after the transform (3)) provided
that the original CF CF0 ∈ [x, x + dx ] :
∞ CFr ≤ 2C (9)
CCDF (CFr ≥ C ) ≅ f
C ×d
CF ( x ) × Pr( s(t ) max ∈ S g ≥C ×d / x )dx
g max

(4) Bounds (8) and (9) are convenient to use when the
upper bound C in (7) is known. Such are cases where
where f CF ( x ) is the probability density function of the the clipping-filtering technique [5] is applied or
symbols of the initial constellation are obtained as a
crest factor of the original signal s(t ) , linear combination of Golay or Golay-like sequences
g max = max g (t ) , and Pr( s(t )
max
∈ S g ≥C ×d / x ) [6].
t∈Tsymb.
The presented theoretical estimates agree with the
denotes the probability that s(t ) max is multiplied by simulation results depicted in Fig. 1 where CCDF of
CF of the original signal and CF of the signals after
a factor equal to, or larger than C × d / x . This application of the ICI SCT [1] - [2] are shown. The
probability can be easily calculated via the function results in Fig.1 are given for OFDM symbols with 64
inverse to g (t ) by using the fact that s (t ) may take 4-QAM subcarriers. For obtaining analytical
on its maximal value at any t ∈ 0, Tsymb. with equal [ ] estimates, we use f CF (x ) of the Gaussian signal.
Two kinds of the correlation polynomials, (1 − D ) and
probability.
For example, repetition coding results in the (1 − D ) 3 , were tested. A slight divergence observed
multiplication of the signal by the function g(t) with between the simulated and theoretical estimates can
the samples be explained by a divergence of the OFDM
distribution from Gaussian.
2πk
g k = 1 − exp( j ) , k = 0,..., N − 1 (5) The curves in Fig.1 clearly indicate that the CF
N gets worse in the probabilistic sense after application
of ICI SCT. This means that the overall BER
and amplitude shaping is defined by a function g (t ) performance can be deteriorated [7] despite that the
above techniques result in ICI mitigation. Thus the
with the samples
application of ICI SCT using frequency-domain
correlation coding should be accompanied by CF
 πk 
g k = 2 sin (6) reduction methods that don’t affect the ICI-
N
cancellation abilities of the schemes.

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 In this scheme, each component of the coded
signal is processed separately and each HPA is
0

Simul. (1-D)3
driven by the signal with the CF equal to that of the
Gaus.approx.
.
Analyt. (1-D)3 original signal. Thus the effect of CF enhancement
-1
Orig. sign.,simul.
after the application of repetition coding is cancelled.
Moreover, because of using multiple amplifiers each
log(CCDF(CF))

-2
-3
-4
-5
4 6 8 10
CF,dB
Fig.1 – CCDF of CF of the original OFDM signal with
64 4-QAM subcarriers (dashed line) and that after
correlation coding with different types of the correlation
polynomials: F ( D ) = (1 − D ) and F ( D ) = (1 − D ) 3 .
1 2
C. Technique description
An approach for solving the joint problem of
frequency offset and nonlinear effects mitigation relies
on a combination of correlation coding with separate
processing each component of the coded signal.
The suggested scheme for the case of repetition
coding is depicted in Fig.2. The signals obtained by
the modulation of the even subcarriers and the odd
ones are processed through two parallel ways.
Correspondingly, two amplifiers are used.
Simul. (1-D)
of them can operate with a larger back-off for
Analyt. (1-D)
providing a required output power. This means that
each HPA operates in a more linear mode.
In the general case of correlation coding with the
correlation polynomial (2), the resulted signal is the
composition of I components. Thus, processing each
12 14 16
component of the composite signal by a separate
amplifier cancels the effect of CF enhancement. In
this case, I amplifiers are employed.
The following lemma is valid.
Lemma: The proposed scheme results in
improving system power efficiency.
Proof: We consider memoryless amplification .
In this case, power relations in an HPA are totally
defined by amplitude modulation-to-amplitude
modulation (AM/AM) conversions. The typical shape
of an AM/AM curve is shown in Fig. 3. It is seen that
the function Po ( Pin ) is concave. Thus, if an HPA is
fed by a signal with the input power Pin then the
output power Po is always less that of the joint power
of K amplifiers fed by the signals with the input
power Pin / K . The amplifier linear gain ( Po / Pin )
decreases as Pin increases. Thus parallel processing
of each component of the coded signal provides more
power efficient and at the same time more linear
regime of the system operation.

input data HPA 1

OFDM
Digital-to-analog
modulator converter

Summing network

{
− exp j 2πk / N } Digital-to-analog
converter

HPA 2

Fig.1 – The suggested scheme for case of repetition coding.

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III. SIMULATION RESULTS
An effective parameter for evaluation of the
efficiency of a scheme where nonlinear effects are
taken into account is the total degradation (TD). It is
calculated at a fixed value of BER = BER 0 as the
sum of the output back-off (OBO)-value (that is
defined as the difference in dB between the output
saturation amplitude and the average output power)
and signal-to-noise degradation due to the
nonlinearity.
The simulation results of TD-performance
comparison of the proposed scheme and the scheme
that uses the clipping-filtering procedure for
prevention of CF enhancement after repetition coding
are reported in Fig. 4. The curves are shown for the
cases where repetition coding is applied to the original
OFDM signal with 32 4-QAM subcarriers as well as
to that after clipping-filtering with the clipping ratio
(CR) equal to 8.94 dB ( CR = Acl / Pin , Acl is the
clipping level and Pin is the input bandpass signal
power). In Fig. 4, the TD in the OFDM systems with
the travelling wave tube amplifier in an AWGN and
Rayleigh channels with the constant normalised (to
the subcarrier bandwidth) frequency offset ε = 0.2
are shown. The simulation results are given for BER
= 10-4. It is seen that using parallel processing of the
components of the coded signal provides the power
gain larger than 2 dB. We emphasize that in case of
two HPA used we calculate the OBO value with
respect to the summed saturation level of the
amplifiers used. We note that using the saturation
level of one HPA when calculating the TD can also be
justified because although each of the amplifiers
operates in an ineffective manner, their joint effect
results in an effective scheme (in the sense of linearity
and providing a required output power). In this case,
the TD will be more than 3 dB less that depicted in
Fig. 4.
Normalized output power
Normalized input power
Fig.3 – Typical shape of AM/AM curve
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11
10.5 AWGN
Rayleigh
10
9.5
9
TD, dB
8.5
8
7.5
7
6.5
6
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
OBO,dB
Fig.4 – Total degradation for schemes with repetition
coding. Solid lines – ordinary signal; dashed line –
application to clipped- filtered signal; marked lines
– two amplifiers used
IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we emphasize the necessity of
elaboration of joint techniques for mitigation of
nonlinear and frequency offset effects in OFDM-
based communication systems. We prove that ICI
SCT using correlation coding in the frequency
domain change the statistical distribution of the CF to
worse. This means that the application of these
techniques may deteriorate the system error
probability performance because of the presence at
the transmitter HPAs, which exhibit nonlinear
behavior with respect to signals with envelope
fluctuations.
We suggest canceling this effect by processing
each component of the coded signal separately with a
separate HPA.. The proposed scheme provides the
following advantages. Firstly, it cancels the effect of
CF enhancement after correlation coding. Secondly,
the scheme supports the ICI cancellation ability of the
ICI SCT because the HPAs owing to larger back-offs
operate in quasi-linear modes. And finally, the
scheme enhances the system power efficiency.
The simulation results prove efficiency of the
suggested scheme.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author would like to thank Prof. P.
Vainikainen for helpful discussions.
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