2032
12, DECEMBER 2012
PAPR Reduction Scheme using Maximum Cross Correlation
E. Al-Dalakta, Student Member, IEEE, A. Al-Dweik, Senior Member, IEEE, A. Hazmi, Member, IEEE,
C. Tsimenidis, Senior Member, IEEE and B. Sharif, Senior Member, IEEE
AbstractThis letter presents an efficient technique to reduce
the impact of nonlinear power amplifiers on the bit error rate
(BER) of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)
systems. The proposed technique is based on the well-established
Partial Transmit Sequence (PTS), a power amplifier model, and a
simple single point cross correlator. Unlike the conventional PTS,
the optimum phase sequence in the proposed system is selected by
maximizing the correlation between the input and output of the
power amplifier model. Simulation results have confirmed that
the BER using the proposed technique is almost identical to the
state-of-the-art while the complexity of the proposed optimization
metric is significantly reduced.
Index TermsOFDM, peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR),
solid state power amplifier (SSPA), partial transmit sequence
(PTS).
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N the literature, enormous research reports considered the
problem of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) inherent in
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals.
A comprehensive survey of various techniques is presented in
[1]. One particular approach that received remarkable attention
is the Partial Transmit Sequence (PTS). However, while the
PTS has exceptional PAPR reduction capability, it suffers from
high computational complexity [2], [3]. The conventional PTS
is based on computing the PAPR for different preselected
phase sequences, then the sequence that minimizes the PAPR
is selected for transmission. The receiver should be informed
about the selected sequence, which is typically performed
by sending side information. The PTS high complexity is
mainly treated by using efficient search processes to select the
optimum phase sequence [2], or by using various optimization
metrics to select the corresponding phase sequence. Exam-
ples for some common optimization metrics are the inter-
modulation distortion (IMD) [4], distortion-to-signal power
ratio (DSR) [5], mean squared error (MSE) [6] and peak
interference-to-carrier ratio (PICR) [7]. In addition to the com-
plexity reduction, adopting a particular optimization metric
would have high impact on the system bit error rate (BER)
[4], [5].
Manuscript received September 25, 2012. The associate editor coordinating
the review of this letter and approving it for publication was C. Sacchi.
E. Al-Dalakta, A. Al-Dweik, C. Tsimenidis, and B. Sharif are with
the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Newcastle
University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, U.K. (e-mail: {emad.qeryaqos,
arafat.al-dweik, charalampos.tsimenidis, bayan.sharif}@ncl.ac.uk). A. Al-
Dweik and B. Sharif are also with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Khalifa University, UAE.
A. Hazmi is with the Department of Communication Engineering, Tam-
pere University of Technology, P.O.Box 553, Tampere, Finland (e-mail:
ali.hazmi@tut.fi).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2012.101712.122151
1089-7798/12$31.00 
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO.
Based on the optimization metric, PTS-based techniques can
be categorized as time-domain or frequency-domain systems.
In time-domain PTS, the optimization metric is computed after
the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) directly [2], [6],
while computing the optimization metric in frequency-domain
PTS is performed after passing the IFFT output through a
nonlinear model followed by a fast Fourier transform (FFT)
to extract the frequency-domain symbols contaminated by
inter-carrier-interference (ICI). Then, the FFT output is used
to compute the optimization metric [4], [5], [7]. Generally
speaking, frequency-domain techniques are more complex due
to the additional FFT operation, which has to be repeated for
several iterations. However, such techniques offer better BER
reduction due to the fact that they are designed to minimize
the ICI, and hence the BER will be minimized as well [4].
As hinted in the above discussion, several techniques aim
at reducing the BER by minimizing the ICI that results from
the high power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearity. Alternatively,
Park and Song [6] proposed a new PTS based on minimizing
the mean squared error (MSE) between the input and output
signals of the HPA. Therefore, the MSE is used to measure the
distortion caused by the HPA and the transmission sequence
is selected to minimize the MSE. The main limitation of this
approach is the high complexity due to the tapping of the HPA
output and the nonlinear adaptive estimator used to estimate
the HPA characteristics.
This letter presents a new technique to reduce the BER
degradation of OFDM systems due the nonlinear characteris-
tics of the HPA. The general structure of the proposed system
is similar to the conventional PTS system, except that the
transmission phase sequence is selected to maximize the cross
correlation between the input and output of the nonlinear HPA
model. The proposed system is highly efficient because it does
not require an FFT after the nonlinear HPA model, nor it
requires accurate knowledge of the HPA characteristics. In
addition to the significant complexity reduction, the achieved
BER of the proposed technique is equivalent to the state-of-
the-art.
II. N ONLINEAR OFDM S YSTEM M ODEL
In general, OFDM signals are composed of N subcarriers
modulated by the complex data sequence d = [d0 , d1 , ...,
dN 1 ], where the data symbols di are selected from an M -ary
quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation. The
OFDM signal can be generated efficiently using an IFFT, x =
FH d, where FH is the IFFT matrix. The nth sample of x can
be expressed as
N 1
1  2kn
xn = dk ej N , n = 0, 1, , N 1. (1)
N k=0
c 2012 IEEE
AL-DALAKTA et al.: PAPR REDUCTION SCHEME USING MAXIMUM CROSS CORRELATION 2033

(0) (0)
The PAPR of x can be accurately estimated by oversampling d
IFFT x x
the vector x by a factor L 4 [8], which is usually achieved
by zero-padding the data vector d, then computing an LN - b0

Sub-block partition
points IFFT. In such cases, the PAPR can be defined as [9], (1) (1)
d IFFT x
  x
max |xn |2 d x
P AP R =   , n = 0, 1, , LN 1 (2) b1
+
2
E x

where E{.} is the ensemble

 average and x is the Euclidean d
(V-1)
IFFT x
(V-1)
x SSPA
2 2
norm of x, x  |x0 | + + |xLN 1 | . The denomi- model
bV-1
nator in (2) represents the average power per OFDM symbol y
at the HPA input, which is denoted as Pin . The output of
the IFFT is usually extended by appending a few samples side Phase Sequence
Correlator
as a cyclic prefix (CP) to prevent intersymbol interference information Selection
(ISI), which forms a complete OFDM symbol x . The OFDM Fig. 1. Block diagram of the proposed PTS-CORR system.
symbol is filtered, upconverted to a higher frequency and
then transmitted through the HPA. The HPA output can be
expressed as yn = F ( xn ), where F is a nonlinear function model with normalized input saturation amplitude Asat can
that represents the filtering process, upconversion and the be approximated as [11],
HPA nonlinearly. Consequently, frequency-domain PTS-based
techniques have to tap the HPA output yn to compute the yn 1 xn + 3 xn |xn |2 (6)
FFT and hence the optimization metric [6]. However, tapping where 1 and 3 are the polynomial coefficients. In practice,
yn and reverting the signal to baseband is quite complicated. the coefficients that represent nonlinearities which demonstrate
An efficient alternative is to use a mathematical model to AM/AM characteristic have real values [4]. Thus, the coeffi-
mimic the HPA as described in [4]. The Rapp and polynomial cients 1 and 3 can be obtained by equating (3) with (6)
models are widely used to model HPA characteristics. The and solving for 1 and 3 using curve fitting method. It is
Rapp model is more accurate while the polynomial model worth noting that the PTS is highly robust against changes
requires less computational complexity. A detailed description in the characteristics of the SSPA, hence 1 and 3 can be
of both models is given in [5], however they are revisited computed only once at the initialization stage.
briefly in this letter for the sake of completeness.
1) Rapp model: The amplifier output yn of the Rapp model
can be expressed as III. P ROPOSED PTS
Fig. 1 depicts the block diagram of the proposed PTS
yn = A(n )ej[ n +(n )] , n  |xn |, n  arg(xn ). (3)
technique. Similar to the conventional PTS, the input data
The operators A(.) and (.) represent the AM/AM and vector d is partitioned into V disjoint sets each of which is
AM/PM conversion of the nonlinear amplifier, respectively. zero padded from the left and right sides,
In this work, we consider the solid state power amplifier (v+1)N/V 1
(SSPA) model which is commonly used in mobile and cellular d(v) = [01vN/V , {d}vN/V , 01[N (v+1)N/V ] ] (7)
communication systems. The phase characteristics of SSPA is where v {0, 1, , V 1}. The output of each branch is
usually flat for a wide range of frequencies, hence it is usually applied to N -point IFFT,
assumed that (n ) = 0. The AM/AM conversion is described
by [10],
 x(v) = FH d(v) . (8)

2p  1 2p
n The nth sample of x(v) can be expressed as
A(n ) = n 1 + (4)
A0
N 1
1  (v) j 2kn
where A0 denotes the maximum amplifier output due to x(v)
n = dk e N , n = 0, 1, , N 1. (9)
maximum input Asat and the smoothness of the transition N k=0
from the linear region to the limiting region can be controlled Subsequently, the complex weighting phase factors bv = ejv ,
by the parameter p. The operating point of the amplifier is v = 0, 1, , V 1 are introduced to rotate the IFFT outputs.
set by choosing either the input back-off (IBO) or the output Finally, the V signals are added to produce the overall time-
back-off (OBO), which can be defined as domain samples x,
A2sat A2 V
 1
IBO = 10 log10 , OBO = 10 log10 0 (5)
Pin Pout x= bv x(v) . (10)
where Pout is the average power of the OFDM symbol at the v=0

output of the amplifier. The effect of the SSPA on the transmitted signal can
2) Polynomial model: The HPA polynomial model is usu- be estimated by applying x to the polynomial model (6).
ally represented by an odd third order nonlinearity. Therefore, Intuitively speaking, if the SSPA has pure linear characteristic
the output of the SSPA using the equivalent polynomial curve, or the maximum signal level is less than the saturation
2034
point of the amplifier, then the input and output of the HPA
will be identical, i.e., x = y, otherwise x = y. Consequently,
this letter proposes a new PTS system based on selecting a
phase sequence that maximizes the similarity between x and y
using the cross correlation as an optimization metric, hence it
is denoted as the CORR algorithm. However, there is no need
to implement a complete cross correlator because it is obvious
that the maximum correlation occurs when there is no shift
between the two signals. The single point cross correlation
can be expressed as,
N 1 N 1 N 1
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 16, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2012
More details about the PAPR approach can be found in
[12].
3) DSR: 6N RMs and 3N RAs are required to compute
the output of the polynomial model yn given in (6),
0.5N log2 N CMs and N log2 N CAs are required to
compute the N -point FFT, 8N RMs and 5N RAs are
required to calculate the DSR metric [5]. Therefore,
RADSR = N (8 + 3 log2 N ), RMDSR = 2N (7 +
log2 N ).
4) MSE: Given that the MSE is used as an optimization
metric instead
 1of the cross correlator in Fig. 1, then
  
(0)
Rxy = xn yn = 1
2
|xn | + 3
4
|xn | . (11) M SE = N 2
n0 |xn yn | . Substituting yn by the right
n=0 n=0 n=0
Since most practical HPAs exhibit compressive nonlinearity,
then 1 /3 < 0 [4]. Moreover, without loss of generality, we
can select 1 > 0 since it represents the amplifier gain, thus
3 < 0. Consequently, the first term in (11) is fixed and the
second term is negative and proportional to |xn |4 . Therefore,
Rxy is maximum when x = y.
In a similar fashion to conventional PTS, the correlation
function Rxy will be computed for all possible phase se-
quences. The selected phase sequence for transmission is
(0)
b = arg max Rxy
b(i)
(i) (i) (i)
where b(i) = [b0 , b1 ,..., bV 1 ], 0 i I, where I
denotes the number of iterations required to find the sequence
b, I 2V 1 . Therefore, the proposed technique indirectly
reduces the signal distortion by maximizing the similarity
between the input and output signals of the HPA.
IV. C OMPUTATIONAL C OMPLEXITY
To simplify the complexity comparison among various
techniques we adopt the BER as a performance metric, and
an oversampling factor L = 1 is used for all techniques. The
computational complexity (CC) is assessed in terms of the
number of real multiplications (RMs) and additions (RAs).
However, since all systems are PTS-based with the same L
value, then their CC is equivalent except for the computation
of the optimization metric. Moreover, the amplifier gain factor
is usually normalized to unity, i.e., 1 = 1 [4]. Consequently,
the CC of all considered systems can be compared based on
the complexity of computing the optimization metric, which
is independent of the number of partitions V , the complexity
of the IFFT and any other processes that are not required
to compute the optimization metric. Given that one complex
multiplication (CM) requires four RMs and three RAs, and
one complex addition (CA) requires two RAs, the CC of the
correlation, PAPR, DSR and MSE metrics for one iteration
can be described as follows:
(0)
1) Rxy : The CC of the correlation metric can be com-
puted directly from (11), which gives after some
straightforward computations RACORR = 3N 1 and
RMCORR = 3N + 1.
2) PAPR: Computing the numerator in (2) requires 2N
RMs and N RAs, and computing the denominator
requires N RAs. Therefore, if the single division process
is ignored, then RAP AP R = 2N and RMP AP R = 2N .
sideof (6) and simplifying the result yields M SE =
N 1 6
23 n=0 |xn | . Consequently, RAMSE = 2N 1 and
RMMSE = 4N + 1.
It can be noted that the CORR metric offers a substantial
complexity reduction of about 80% and 90% in terms of the
required RAs and RMs, respectively, when compared to the
DSR [5] for N = 128. The MSE requires about 33% less
RAs than the CORR scheme, however it requires about 33%
more RMs. Therefore, the MSE has a non negligible additional
complexity over the proposed metric since the complexity of
multiplication is considerably higher than the addition. The
(12) PAPR metric requires about 66% of the RAs and RMs that
are required to compute the correlation metric. However, it is
worth noting that the PAPR metric requires the knowledge of
the maximum of N elements for I iterations.
As it can be noted from the above discussion, the complex-
ity of the optimization metric is independent of the number
of partitions V , which is a pivotal parameter that determine
the overall system complexity. By excluding the optimization
process part, the PTS RM can be expressed as [12],
RM = 2 N V MV [I log2 N + 2(I 1)] , (13)
where MV 1 is a scaling factor that accounts for the com-
plexity reduction that can be achieved due to the sparseness of
the data vectors x(v) , MV 0.6 for N = 128 [12]. Therefore,
comparing the total complexity of the PTS using the proposed
metric with [5] for V = I =4 shows that the overall RMs of
the CORR-PTS method is about 35% less than the DSR-PTS
[5], and it is about 2.5% less than the MMSE [6] excluding
the complexity of the adaptive nonlinear estimator and the RF
to baseband conversion.
V. N UMERICAL R ESULTS
Monte Carlo simulation is used to assess the BER perfor-
mance of the proposed system and compare it to the standard
PAPR, DSR and MMSE systems. The simulation results are
obtained using 105 OFDM blocks generated using N = 128
subcarriers. The data symbols are selected uniformly from a
Gray coded 16-QAM symbol constellation. The number of
partitions V used is either 4 or 16. Instead of searching for
the optimum phase sequence b among I = 2V 1 possible
sequences, we limit the search space to only I = V different
sequences with the elements of each sequence are selected
uniformly from {0, } [2]. For coherent demodulation, we
assume perfect knowledge of the phase sequence and the
channel state information at the receiver side.
AL-DALAKTA et al.: PAPR REDUCTION SCHEME USING MAXIMUM CROSS CORRELATION
SSPA only
2
10 PAPR
CORR
MSE
DSR
3
10
BER
V=4
4 PAPR V=4
10 V=16
5 5
10
15 20 25 30 35
SNR (dB)
Fig. 2. BER of the PAPR, DSR and proposed method over AWGN channels
using V = 4 and 16.
The SSPA model described in (3) is used to represent the
transmission HPA, while the model given in (6) is used for the
DSR and correlation metrics calculation. This is necessary to
model the difference between the practical HPA and the math-
(0)
ematical model used to compute Rxy . The transmission SSPA
parameters are selected to match the practical SSPA amplifier
described in [13]. This amplifier is used for WiMAX in the
frequency range 2.3 to 2.5 GHz. The amplifier parameters
for both models are computed using curve fitting methods for
OBO = 3 dB, where p = 3.286, 1 = 1 and 3 = 0.1769.
The BER performance of the proposed and the other consid-
ered schemes is presented in Fig. 2 for additive white Gaussian
noise (AWGN) channel using V = 4 and 16. As it can be
noted from this figure, the proposed CORR BER is equivalent
to the BER of the DSR and MMSE for both values of V ,
while the BER of the PAPR is significantly higher. Therefore,
tapping the HPA output and estimating its characteristics
accurately did not have any noticeable impact on the BER
while the complexity will be increased substantially.
The BER performance of the CORR over frequency-
selective multipath fading channels is presented in Fig. 3. The
considered fading channel consists of 5 multipath components
with delays of [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] samples and average gain of [0.35,
0.25, 0.18, 0.13, 0.09] with mean square delay spread 2 ( ) =
1.74. The results presented in Fig. 3 clearly demonstrate that
the BER performance trend in fading channels follows that in
AWGN channels where the correlation approach outperforms
the PAPR technique and matches the DSR and MMSE.
VI. C ONCLUSIONS
This work presented a new low complexity technique to
reduce the BER performance degradation caused by the non-
linear characteristics of the SSPA utilized in OFDM-based
systems. The proposed technique is based on maximizing
the correlation between the input and output of the SSPA.
Complexity analyses have demonstrated that the total number
of real multiplications of the proposed CORR-PTS is about
35% less than the DSR-PTS [5], and it is about 2.5% less
2035
1
10
2
10
BER
3
10
SSPA only
CORR V=4
4
10 MSE V=4
DSR V=4
PAPR V=16
CORR V=16
MSE V=16
DSR V=16
10
15 20 25 30 35 40
SNR (dB)
Fig. 3. BER of the PAPR, DSR and proposed system over multipath fading
channels using V = 4 and 16.
than the MMSE-PTS excluding the complexity of the adaptive
nonlinear estimator and the RF to baseband conversion [6].
The BERs for the proposed, DSR and MMSE techniques are
roughly identical.
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