Multicarrier modulation with variable peak-to-average power ratio using partial fast Fourier transform

The authors present a novel frequency division multiplexing scheme which can generate a signal whose worst-case peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) is tunable by an input parameter; they call this scheme tunable PAPR frequency division multiplexing (TP-FDM). Special cases of TP-FDM are orthogonal FDM (OFDM) and single carrier (SC) modulation. Unlike several other proposed PAPR reduction schemes, TP-FDM requires no per-symbol side information to be sent from transmitter to receiver. TP-FDM has overall computational requirements almost the same as OFDM. The author´s study of the symbol error rate (SER) of TP-FDM in a Rayleigh fading channel shows that higher PAPR signals give a better SER performance. Thus, instead of choosing either of the extremes, OFDM and SC modulation, as is currently done in some cellular systems, one can tune the PAPR with TP-FDM to the maximum suitable for the transmitter and receiver device electronics, so as to minimise SER. They compare and contrast TP-FDM with transform precoded OFDM methods in terms of SER and PAPR. They also extend TP-FDM to a multi-user scenario.