Analytical BER calculation for distorted OFDM systems using sequence development approach

The nonlinearity of high power amplifiers (HPAs) exhibits amplitude and phase distortions, which cause loss of orthogonality among the subcarriers in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, and hence, inter-carrier interference (ICI) is introduced in the transmitted signal. The ICI power is proportional to the amplitude of the signal at the amplifier input and it may cause a considerable bit error rate (BER) degradation. Due to the ICI is a random process and has unknown distribution function, it is difficult to evaluate the theoretical BER when the ICI is taken into account. This paper evaluates the BER analytically using sequence development approach (SDA) for OFDM systems perturbed by the HPA. In comparison to the state-of-the-art technique, the evaluation of the BER using this approach achieves superior approximation at the expense of additional computational complexity.