An evaluation of PAPR reduction effects in OFDM systems using several power amplifier models

Tone Reservation (TR) is a method used to reduce the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. In this paper, we assess the importance of considering an improved model of the power amplifier (PA) to accurately evaluate the performance of TR method based on Conjugate-Gradient algorithm. Simulation results were carried out in the context of WLAN IEEE 802.11a standard in presence of two memoryless models and nonlinear polynomial model with memory. These models are obtained by an experimental based method, including measurements and parameters identification with a 2.4 GHz class AB PA from RF Micro Devices. The evaluation results as well as the experimental comparison show that TR method considerably improves the transmission quality, in terms of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Error Vector Magnitude (EVM). These results highlight the importance of considering memory effects in PA modelling.