Analytical evaluation of nonlinear effects in MC-CDMA signals

The MC-CDMA signals (multicarrier coded division multiple access) have strong envelope fluctuations which make them very prone to nonlinear effects. These effects can be both intentional (such as the ones inherent to a nonlinear signal processing for reducing the envelope fluctuations) or not (such as the ones inherent to a nonlinear power amplification). In this paper we present an analytical tool for the performance evaluation of nonlinear effects in MC-CDMA signals which takes advantage of the Gaussian-like behavior of MC-CDMA signals with a large number of subcarriers and employs results on memoryless nonlinear devices with Gaussian inputs so as to characterize statistically the signals at the output of the nonlinear device. This characterization is then used for an analytical computation of the SIR levels (signal-to-interference ratio) and the BER performance (bit error rate). A set of numerical results is presented and discussed, showing the accuracy of the analytical BER performance analysis in the presence of nonlinear effects