Comparison of PAPR Reduction Techniques in
OFDM systems
Preenu Ann P
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Rajiv Gandhi Institute of
Technology
Kottayam, India
Email :preenu91@gmail.com
Abstract— Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) is a spectrally efficient multicarrier
modulation technique for high speed data transmission
over multipath fading channels. OFDM modulation schemes
offer many advantages for multicarrier transmission at
high data rates. One of the main issues of OFDM is high
Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitted
signal which adversely affects the complexity of power
amplifiers. A number of promising techniques have been
proposed and implemented to reduce PAPR of OFDM
signal with expense of transmitted signal power, Bit
error rate (BER), complexity etc. In this paper, clipping
and filtering, selective mapping (SLM), partial transmit
sequence (PTS), linear block coding (LBC), peak insertion
(PI) techniques are implemented for PAPR reduction of
OFDM signal at transmitter. Comparison of these PAPR
reduction techniques is done based on CCDF and BER
performance of the system.
Keywords— Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, peak-
to-average power ratio, Bit Error rate (BER), Complementary
Cumulative Distribution Function (CCDF), power amplifier (PA)
I. INTRODUCTION
The demand for high-quality communication services,
anywhere, anytime, is growing rapidly. It is a great challenge
for system designers to deal with techniques that improve the
provided Quality of Service and reduces the effect of delay
spread, Doppler shift. To fulfill this requirement, Orthogonal
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) [1],[2],[3] is
an attractive technology, as it deals with the multicarrier
modulation. It has several advantages like high data rate
transmission with high bandwidth efficiency, exceptional
robustness to multi-path fading and low implementation
complexity. So far, OFDM techniques have been adopted
in European Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Digital
Video Broadcasting (DVB),Wireless LANs and broadband
fixed wireless systems , and it is considered as a potential
technology for 4th generation telecommunications systems.
However, OFDM system has limitations. The OFDM
signal is formed from the linear addition of independently
modulated subcarriers. As a result, when the number of
Renu Jose
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
IIIT
Kottayam, India
Email :renu.jose@rit.ac.in
subcarriers is large, high amplitude peaks occur which results
in high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR)[2]. Usually, the
OFDM signal is passed through a non-linear power amplifier
before its transmission over the channel. High PAPR value
requires complex high power amplifier (HPA) operating
on a very large linear range at the transmitter. Otherwise,
the nonlinearity of the HPA leads to in-band distortion,
which increases the bit error rate (BER) of the system, and
the out-of-band distortion, which introduces high adjacent
channel interference.
In this paper, an OFDM system has been simulated and
various PAPR reduction techniques are used for PAPR
reduction. Clipping method, selective mapping, partial transmit
sequence, linear block coding, peak insertion has been discussed
in previous works [9-10]. The PAPR reduction is evaluated
using ccdf plots and the performance is compared. The ber plots
for various cases of OFDM has been simulated.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II briefly
presents the OFDM system model and the PAPR statistics.
In section III, the PAPR reduction techniques are explained.
Simulation results and discussions are addressed in section IV.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in section V.
II. SYSTEM MODEL AND PAPR
A. OFDM System
In OFDM systems, as shown in fig.1, a fixed number of
successive input data samples are modulated first (e.g.,
Quadrature Phase Shift Keying), and then combined together
using IFFT at the transmitter side. IFFT is used to produce
orthogonal data subcarriers. Let data block of length N be
represented by a vector .
=[ , ,…, ] (1)
Duration of any symbol in the set X is T and represents
one of the sub-carriers set. The complex data block for the
OFDM signal to be transmitted is given by

Fig.1: Implementation of OFDM
1 eliminated by filtering the signal after clipping, out-of-band
( )= ∆
0≤ ≤ (2)
√ reduced by filtering. However, oversampling by taking longer
Where j=√−1 , ∆ is the subcarrier spacing and NT
denotes the useful data block period
B. PAPR
The use of a large number of subcarriers introduces a high
PAPR in OFDM systems [4], [5], [6]. PAPR can be defined as
the relationship between the maximum power of a sample in a
transmit OFDM symbol and its average power. Coherent
addition of N signals of same phase produces a peak which is N
times the average signal. PAPR can vary up to its theoretically
maximum of 10 ( ) (dB), where N is the number of
subcarriers.
| ( )|
= (3)
[| ( )| ]
Where | ( )| is the magnitude of x(n) and E[ ] denotes the
expectation operation.
PAs at the transmitter are driven into saturation due to high
PAPR, degrading the BER performance. To avoid driving the
PA into saturation, the average power of the signal may be
reduced. However, this reduces the SNR and, consequently, the
BER performance. Therefore, it is preferable to solve the
problem of high PAPR by reducing the peak power of the
signal. Many PAPR reduction techniques have been proposed.
The performance of a PAPR reduction scheme is usually
demonstrated by two main factors: the complementary
cumulative distributive function (CCDF) and bit error rate
(BER).
III. PAPR REDUCTION TECHNIQUES
A. Clipping and Filtering
One of the simplest PAPR reduction methods is the method of
clipping the high peaks of the OFDM signal before passing it
through the power amplifier. Clipping is a nonlinear pro-
Fig. 2. Block Diagram of OFDM with clipping and filtering
cess that leads to both in-band and out-of-band distortions.
While in-band distortion causes spectral spreading and can be
distortion can degrade the BER performance and cannot be
IFFT can reduce the in-band distortion effect as portion of
the noise is reshaped outside of the signal band that can be
removed later by filtering. Filtering the clipped OFDM signal
can preserve the spectral efficiency by eliminating the out-of-
band distortion and, hence, improving the BER performance but
it can lead to peak power regrowth [7].
A block diagram of clipping and filtering is shown in Fig.
2 [7]. Quadrature phase shift-keying (QPSK) data symbols
are passed through an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT)
module to realize the OFDM modulation. If the digital OFDM
signals are clipped directly, the resulting clipping noise will
all fall in-band and cannot be reduced by filtering. Hence an
oversampling is done. Then, the real-valued bandpass samples,
x, are clipped at an amplitude A as follows:
− , <−
= , − ≤ ≤− (4)
, <
Then the clipped signal is passed through a filter and
transmitted. At the receiver, the reverse operations are done.
B. Selective Mapping
Selective mapping (SLM) is a simple approach to reduce
PAPR [8]. In this method, a set of sufficient different OFDM
symbols , 0 ≤ ≤ − 1 are generated, each of
length N , all representing the same information as that of the
original OFDM symbol x, then the one with the least PAPR is
transmitted . Mathematically, the transmitted OFDM symbol x̂
is represented as
= [ ( )] (5)
The OFDM symbols set can be generated by multiplying the
original data block = [ , , … , ] ,element-by-element,
 Fig. 3. Block Diagram of OFDM transmitter with SLM Fig. 4. Block Diagram of OFDM transmitter with PTS

by M different phase sequences pm, each of length N, before computed and weighted by a phase factor = , where
taking IDFT. For simplifying the implementation, the phase , ∈ [0 , 2 , 1 ≤ ≤ . The aim now is to select the set
)
sequences can be set to {±1, ± } as these values can be of phase factors, ’s that minimizes the PAPR of the
implemented without multiplication. Then the modified OFDM combined time domain signal x, where x is defined as
symbol , 0 ≤ ≤ − 1, is the IDFT of the element-by-
element multiplication of X and
= (8)
= [ , , …. , ] (6)

The first phase factor can be set to 1 in order to avoid any

A block diagram of the SLM technique is depicted in Fig. 3[4].
loss of performance, therefore,M-1 phase factors are to be
The selected phase sequence should be transmitted to the
found by an exhaustive search. On one hand, the larger is the
receiver as side information to allow the recovery of original
number of sub-blocks M, the greater is the reduction in PAPR.
symbol sequence at the receiver, which decreases the data
On the other hand, the search complexity is increasing
transmission rate. The phase sequences , 0 ≤ ≤ − 1,
exponentially with M. In addition, M IDFT blocks are needed
should be stored at both the transmitter and receiver. An
to implement the PTS scheme, side information has to be
erroneous detection of the side information will cause the
transmitted.
whole system to be destroyed. Hence strong protection of the
side information is very important.
D. Linear Block Coding
C. Partial Transmit Sequence
Instead of dedicating some bits of the codeword to enhance
In partial transmit sequence (PTS), an input data block having
BER performance, these bits are now dedicated to reduce
length N is partitioned into a number of disjoint sub-
PAPR [4]. The codewords with low PAPR have to be cho
blocks by pseudo-random partitioning [9]. The IDFT is
sen for transmission. A simple linear block coding (LBC)
computed separately for each one of these sub-blocks and then
scheme was proposed in [10] , where 4 bits are mapped
weighted by a phase factor. The phase factors are selected such
into 5 bits by adding a parity bit. It is based on the
that the PAPR of the combined signal of all the sub-blocks is
observation that irrespective of codeword length, four specific
minimized.
codewords will always have disproportionately large PAPR
Fig.4. shows a block diagram of the OFDM transmitter with
values [12]. These are the codewords where the odd and
PTS technique [4]. Let an input data block X be partitioned
into M disjoint sub-blocks, even bit values are equal, i.e. the all-zero, all-one, (1010 ...)
=[ , , , ] ,
1 ≤ ≤ , such that any two of these sub-blocks are and (0101 ...) codewords. The PAPR can hence be very easily
orthogonal and X is the combination of all the M sub-blocks. reduced by eliminating these codewords using a simple added
bit code. If the codeword length is equal to n, then a single
=∑ (7) extra bit , is added with a value equal to the inverse of
the penultimate codeword bit . Then the four codewords with
Then the IDFT for each sub-block , ,1 ≤ ≤ , is high power are now eliminated.
E. Peak Insertion
The PI technique [11] is implemented by adding an impulse
to the original OFDM symbol in the frequency domain. The
resulting signal Y (k) is given by
( )= ( )+ ( − ) 0≤ ≤ −1 (9)
Where X(k) is the original OFDM symbol , is a positive
real number representing the strength of the inserted peak ,
is the position of the inserted peak , N is the number of
subcarriers.
A block diagram of the PI technique is shown in Fig. 5.
Cyclic prefix is added to the OFDM symbol in order to avoid
intersymbol interference, then the peak, α, is inserted in order
to increase the PAPR of the signal in the frequency domain.
However, the mean square value of this signal will increase
after PI . This signal is then transformed to the time domain
by an N -point IFFT. The resulting signal will have a low
PAPR with respect to the same signal obtained without PI
[11], but with a greater mean square value. The power of
this signal is then controlled by scaling it by β such that
its mean square value is reduced to a suitable level without
affecting the PAPR reduction. This signal is then fed to the
communication channel. At the receiver, the reverse operations
are performed to recover the original OFDM symbols. This
requires the availability of some transmitter parameters at the
receiver such as α and β. Actually, these system parameters can
be fixed together with other system design parameters like N ,
L,etc., before the system starts operation. So, there is no need
to transmit any side information in parallel with the OFDM
signal.
Fig. 5. Peak Insertion Technique
IV. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
The system is modeled using Matlab to study the effect
of various PAPR reduction techniques. The aim of doing the
simulations is to evaluate the performance of various PAPR
reduction techniques and compare them. Different parameters
used in the system simulation are given in Table 1. Simulation
is done under the assumption that proper synchronization
is maintained between the transmitter and the receiver. The
length of the cyclic prefix is chosen to be greater than
the maximum delay spread in order to avoid inter symbol
interference. Simulations are carried out for different signal-
to-noise ratios (SNR).
The simulations are conducted first for simple clipping and
filtering method to reduce PAPR value of OFDM signal with
QPSK modulation and a clipping ratio (CR) of 7 dB. The CR is
related to the clipping level by the expression:
= 20 (10)
[ ]
where E[x] denotes the average value of OFDM signal. Then
selective mapping is done by creating M = 10 OFDM symbols
and each is multiplied with 10 different phase sequences
and the symbol with least PAPR is transmitted . Then partial
transmit sequence is simulated by partitioning into 4 sub-
blocks and each were weighed by a phase factor. The phase
factors are selected in such a way as to minimize the PAPR of
the combined signal of all the sub-blocks. Then linear block
coding is simulated by adding an extra bit equal to the inverse
of the penultimate codeword bit. In PI technique, an impulse
of strength 0.25 is inserted into the OFDM symbol. A scaling
factor of 0.5 is applied.The CCDF is the most important factor
used for evaluating the PAPR. PAPR reduction capability is
measured by the amount of CCDF reduction achieved. CCDF
provides an indication of the probability of the OFDM signals
envelope exceeding a specified PAPR threshold within the
OFDM symbol and is given by
( ) = [ ( ( ) > )] (11)
n (t)) nth
where PAPR(x is the PAPR of the OFDM symbol
and δ is some threshold.
 consideration before choosing the appropriate PAPR technique.
In this paper, only Single Input Single Output (SISO) OFDM
systems have been considered. It can be extended to MIMO
OFDM which can be implemented using multiple transmitting
and receiving antennas which is an interesting work of future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to thank TEQIP PHASE-2 of RIT,

Kottayam and IIIT, Kottayam for the support.

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