An Approach for PAPR Reduction based on Tone

Reservation Method
Yunmok Son, Chang Hyun Nam, and Hwang Soo Lee
Division of Electrical Engineering, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
KAIST
Daejeon, Korea
{yunmok00, chang}@mcl.kaist.ac.kr, hwanglee@ee.kaist.ac.kr

AbstractIn the multicarrier transmissions such as orthogonal

frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), one of the main
problem is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of
transmission signals due to the superposition of many subcarriers.
In this paper, we propose an approach for PAPR reduction using
tone reservation (TR). The proposed approach guarantees a
certain bound of PAPR reduction gain by using only one
reserved subcarrier symbol. The bound depends on the ratio of
the first and second peak magnitude. The proposed approach can
be applied to not only one reserved subcarrier but also multiple
reserved subcarriers. In the latter case, two methods are
presented. To get more PAPR reduction gain, the proposed
approach can be modified by adjusting the appropriate threshold.
Keywords-PAPR; tone reservation; OFDM

I.

In this paper, we propose an approach using TR method.

The proposed approach guarantees the same bound of PAPR
reduction gain of [5] by using only one reserved subcarrier
symbol. We verify the magnitude and phase of a symbol for
that the reserved subcarrier. Also we present two methods for
multiple reserved subcarriers by the proposed approach.
II.

PAPR REDUCTION GAIN AND TR METHOD

A signal c[n] is added to the original data signal x[n] for

PAPR reduction. The PAPR reduction gain is defined by
subtracting PAPR with PAPR reduction from PAPR without
PAPR reduction. Thus GPAPR means the amount of peak
reduction in dB. ( N is fast Fourier transform (FFT) size.)

INTRODUCTION

In the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)

systems such as IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16, one of the
main problem is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR)
of the transmission signal due to the superposition of many
subcarriers. The high PAPR leads inefficiency of power and
cost at the transmitter. Specially, in the uplink (UL)
transmission, the PAPR problem is more serious, because a
mobile station (MS) operates by a small battery.
To reduce PAPR, several methods have been proposed [1,
2]. The distortion based methods include amplitude clipping,
iterative clipping and filtering, tone injection (TI), and active
constellation extension (ACE). These methods generate
distortions at peak positions which cause a BER degradation
and interference to other subcarriers. The scrambling based
methods such as interleaving, partial transmit sequence (PTS),
and selective mapping (SLM) require a high computational
complexity. The coding based methods, which use code books
to map the data sequences to the low PAPR sequences, cause a
lot of redundancy and data rate loss. Another category is the
tone reservation (TR) based methods [3, 4]. These methods
cause no distortion to the data signal and no additional
processing at the receiver, but they cause data rate loss and
increase the average power due to using the reserved
subcarriers. In [5], the TR method which reduces PAPR using
several null subcarriers was proposed, and the PAPR reduction
gain and its bound are analyzed in a point of probability and
statistics.

This work was supported in part by the IT R&D program of MKE/IITA

under Contract number 2005-S-609-04 in Korea.

GPAPR

max x[n]
0 n < N 1

= 10 log
max x[n] + c[n] 2
0 n< N 1

(1)

To reduce PAPR, the TR method assigns the signal to the

reserved subcarriers which is not used for the data transmission
or already preserved.

X , kS
X k + Ck = k
c
C k , k S

(2)

The data symbols X k and the symbols Ck to reduce PAPR

are located exclusively ( S is a set of subcarrier indices for the
data transmission). Thus there are no signal distortion and no
additional processing to get the data signal at the receiver.
III.

PROPOSED APPROACH

In the proposed approach, by using only one reserved

subcarrier, a certain amount of PAPR reduction gain is
guaranteed. The time signal which is composed by only one
symbol at a frequency index ki is

c[n] =

1
2 ki n
Cki exp j
N
N

for n = 0,1,..., N 1

(3)

This time signal has a constant magnitude and a time

varying phase for all n . To suppress the first peak magnitude
of the data signal, the phase of c[n] must be an opposite phase
of x[ n1 ] , where nl is a time index of the l -th peak.

x[ n1 ] x[ n2 ]
1
Cki =
2
N

2 ki n1
c[ n1 ] = Cki +
= x[n1 ] +
N

Probability (PAPR > value in x-axis)

c[n1 ] = c[ n] =

(4)

(5)

Also the magnitude of c[n] is set as a half of the difference

between the first and second peak magnitude to prevent an
unexpected peak re-growth. We can find out the magnitude and
phase of the symbol by (4, 5). By adding c[n] to x[n] , the
first peak magnitude is reduced as,

x [ n1 ] = x[ n1 ] c[ n1 ] =

x[ n1 ] + x[ n2 ]
2

x[ n1 ] + x[ n2 ]
2

= x [ n1 ]

(6)

(7)

Therefore we can guarantee the PAPR reduction gain.

Although we only use one subcarrier, the maximum PAPR
reduction gain is 6.02 dB. The bound of PAPR reduction gain
depends on the ratio of the first and second peak magnitude.

x[n1 ]
GPAPR = 20 log

( x[n1 ] + x[n2 ] ) / 2

x[n2 ]
= 6.02 20 log 1 +

x[n1 ]

-1

10

-2

10

-3

10

no PAPR reduction
using 1 subcarrier

-4

10

7.5

8.5

9.5

10

10.5

11

11.5

12

PAPR (dB)

Fig. 1. PAPR reduction performance of the proposed approach

The magnitude of the second peak is also changed, but it is

always smaller than the changed magnitude of the first peak,
even though the phase of the second peak is the same to the
phase of c[ n2 ] (the worst case).

x [ n2 ] x[ n2 ] + c[ n2 ] =

UL PUSC zone in IEEE 802.16e (16QAM)

10

(8)

A simple simulation is conducted in a uplink partial usage

subchannels (UL PUSC) zone according to IEEE 802.16e
standard. The modulation scheme is 16QAM, and N is 1024.
Figure 1 shows the PAPR reduction performance of the
proposed approach. The PAPR reduction gain is about 1.5 dB
when one subchannel is used.
Since resources are assigned as a group of subcarriers in the
most of systems, there exist more subcarriers for PAPR
reduction. To use these additionally reserved subcarriers, the
proposed approach can be used as two methods. (Assume that
we have R reserved subcarriers.) The first method is an
iterative method. Through R times iterations, the proposed
approach can decide the magnitude and phase of each symbol
to suppress the peak magnitude of a new transmission signal on
the each iteration. After some iteration, the PAPR reduction
gain will be very small, because the magnitude of the first peak
will be closer and closer to that of the second peak on the each

iteration. The second method is a non-iterative method. By the

proposed approach, from the first peak to R -th peak can be
suppressed by R reserved subcarriers. Since the magnitude of
the first peak has the bound, next R 1 subcarriers do not
affect to PAPR. In both methods, to enlarge the PAPR
reduction gain, we need to replace x[n2 ] in (8) with more
appropriate threshold which is smaller than the magnitude of
the second peak.
IV.

CONCLUSION

In this paper, a TR based PAPR reduction approach is

proposed. The proposed approach can be used for the OFDM
base systems. Also it makes no BER degradation, no
interference to other subcarriers and no additional processing at
the receiver. Although we use only one reserved subcarrier, the
maximum PAPR reduction gain can be 6.02 dB by the
proposed approach. The proposed approach can be applied to
not only one reserved subcarrier but also multiple reserved
subcarriers. To use multiple subcarriers efficiently, iterative
and non-iterative methods are applicable. Also to get more
PAPR reduction gain, we can adjust the appropriate threshold
instead of the magnitude of the second peak.
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[2]

[3]
[4]

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