Design of crest factor reduction techniques based on clipping and filtering for wireless communications systems

Crest factor reduction (CFR) is a technique that is commonly used for the linearization of power amplifiers (PAs) for mobile communication systems. In published works containing the use of CFR, it is assumed a priori that the inclusion of CFR will be beneficial, and the main objective is to achieve improvements in the processes of parameter identification or technique implementation. The main contribution of this work is to consolidate a criterion to determine whether is positive or not to linearize a PA through the use of CFR based on a hard clipping limiter followed by a filter. The criterion is then validated through computational simulations performed on a PA modeled by a Wiener cascade and excited by a 3GPP WCDMA signal having a PAPR of 12 dB. It is verified that, in this example, the criterion indicates that the application of CFR is beneficial, which is confirmed by an increase of 1.8 dB in average output power.