Performance of OFDM receivers in presence of nonlinear power amplifiers

The nonlinear response of power amplifiers in radio transmitters affects the bit error rate performance of OFDM communication systems. We study traveling wave tube and soft-limiter amplifiers, and obtain bit-error rates of an OFDM system using analytical techniques as well as computer simulation when the operation of the receiver blocks is taken into account. This is done with and without a predistorter in the transmitter. Computer simulations are done for a communication system designed based on the IEEE 802.11a standard for wireless local area networks. Good agreement between the predicted analytical values and simulation results are obtained, especially at high channel SNRs.