Peak to Average Power Reduction for Low-Power OFDM Systems

For orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, peak to average power ratio (PAPR) can be a major impediment to efficient transmission due to the need to use inefficient highly linear amplifiers. This paper presents an iterative algorithm to reduce the PAPR of a low-power OFDM system by 3 dB at a clipping probability of 10^-2, and over 5 dB for 10^-5 with asymptotically no loss in code rate for low signal to noise ratios (SNR). The reduced PAPR allows the system to use a more efficient form of linear amplifier, for an overall reduction in transmitter power consumption by over a factor of three at low SNR. In addition, the algorithm does not require any side information to be transmitted to the receiver to allow decoding.