TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ett.2518

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Partial response DFT-precoded-OFDM modulation

Kiran Kuchi*,†
Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India

ABSTRACT
A low peak-to-average-power-ratio (PAPR) modulation technique is proposed for discrete Fourier transform precoded
orthogonal frequency division multiple access (DFT-precoded-OFDMA) systems. This technique reduces the PAPR by
introducing a phase rotation between successive modulation symbols along with partial response (PR) precoding before
feeding the data to a DFT-precoded-OFDMA modulator. The PAPR reduction is shown to be quite significant for
amplitude-shift-keying systems based on real constellations employing =2 phase rotation. In particular, for the special
case of binary modulation, the combination of phase rotation and PR precoding produces a signal with low amplitude
variations. We show that the class of PR precoders obtained by sampling the linearised Gaussian-minimum-shift-keying
pulse provides low PAPR and a small degradation in bit-error-rate (BER) performance. In particular, the widely linear
minimum-mean-square-error (WL-MMSE) estimation and WL MMSE decision feedback equaliser (WL MMSE-DFE)
methods that jointly filter the signal and its complex conjugate are shown to be useful in mitigating the additional inter-
symbol interference introduced by the PR precoder. The BER performance is comparable with that of conventional
DFT-precoded-OFDMA systems employing conventional equalisers.
The proposed technique is also suitable for reducing the PAPR of Q-ary phase-shift-keying systems based on complex
constellations employing a phase rotation of =Q. Introduction of Type A-2 PR precoder that is obtained from the lin-
earised Gaussian-minimum-shift-keying pulse reduces the PAPR by 3.0 dB for quadrature phase-shift keying, and 2:5 dB
reduction is observed for Q-ary phase-shift keying with Q > 8. The intersymbol interference created by the PR precoder
causes bit-error-rate degradation in the range of 2.0–2.5 dB when conventional MMSE-DFE receiver is used for symbol
detection. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEY WORDS
Equalizers; MMSE; MMSE-DFE
*Correspondence
Kiran Kuchi, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India.
E-mail: kkuchi@iith.ac.in
†
Part of this work is funded by the DIT project Cyber Physical Systems

Received 30 July 2011; Revised 6 January 2012; Accepted 27 January 2012

1. INTRODUCTION (PAPR). To mitigate the intersymbol interference (ISI)

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)
has been widely adopted in both imminent and emerg-
ing wireless standards. The third generation partnership
project long-term-evolution standard has adopted OFDMA
in the downlink and discrete Fourier transform-precoded-
OFDMA (DFT-precoded-OFDMA)[1] (also known as
single-carrier frequency-division multiple access (SC-
FDMA)) [2] in the uplink. SC-FDMA applies DFT
precoding on the baseband modulation symbols before
transmitting the data on the subcarriers. Different users
share the available frequency resources in the frequency
domain. Because of DFT precoding, the resultant modula-
tion signal exhibits single-carrier properties such as sinc-
like pulse shaping [3] and low peak-to-average power ratio
induced by the DFT precoding, the SC-FDMA system
uses frequency domain equalisation. The main advantage
of lower PAPR is the less power amplifier back-off com-
pared with OFDMA. Moreover, the SC-FDMA systems
use the standard DFT and inverse DFT (IDFT) circuits that
are widely used in conventional OFDMA systems resulting
in low implementation complexity.
Traditionally, partial response (PR) precoding is used
to design Nyquist class of pulses that are less sensitive
to sampling timing errors [3]. The duo-binary precoder
is one such example. PR precoding is also used to intro-
duce a controlled amount of ISI to reduce out of band
emissions. This principle is used in Gaussian-minimum-
shift keying (GMSK) [4]. The continuous phase, con-
stant envelope GMSK signal can be approximated as a

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

 K. Kuchi
pulse-amplitude-modulation (PAM) signal using the lin-
earised GMSK representation that includes only the first
term in Laurent’s decomposition [5]. Linearised GMSK
has 90°phase rotation between successive binary mod-
ulation symbols and uses a specific pulse that intro-
duces ISI that spans a few symbols. The combination
of constellation rotation and the pulse employed pro-
duces a signal with near constant envelope with PAPR
close to unity. However, linearised GMSK is a nonband-
limited signal whose spectral occupancy exceeds beyond
the Nyquist cut-off frequency. For Nyquist class of sig-
nals, the PAPR can also be reduced by designing pulses
with certain excess bandwidth (BW) [3]. The well-known
square-root-raised-cosine pulses have low PAPR depend-
ing on the excess BW allowed. However, spectrum being
a scarce resource, allowing additional BW only to reduce
PAPR, is generally not preferred. Therefore, there is a
need for designing waveforms with low PAPR without
BW expansion.
In this paper, we propose a modification to conventional
DFT-precoded-OFDM modulator where PR precoding and
modulation-specific constellation rotation operations are
applied on the input data to reduce the PAPR. It is
shown that PR precoders obtained from a certain class
of linearised GMSK pulses offer a significant reduction
in PAPR. The proposed technique offers considerable
PAPR reduction for amplitude-shift-keying (ASK) systems
employing real constellations using a constellation rotation
of =2. For the special case of binary signalling, we obtain
a PAPR of approximately 2.0 dB, which is 4.5 dB less
compared with the PAPR of conventional systems. Note
that standard PAPR reduction methods such as selective
mapping and partial sequencing cannot be applied after
DFT precoding of data because it violates the single-carrier
property and affects the PAPR properties. The techniques
proposed in this paper are improvements upon standard
DFT-precoded-OFDMA methods.
For the case of real-valued signalling, the additional
ISI introduced by the PR precoder is mitigated using a
widely linear (WL) equaliser [6–13] that jointly equalises
the signal and its complex conjugate. We propose WL
minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) estimation and WL
MMSE-decision feedback equaliser (WL MMSE-DFE)
algorithms that are specifically tailored for DFT-precoded-
OFDMA systems. We show that both methods are able to
deal with the additional ISI created by the PR precoder
in addition to the ISI inherently present in the propaga-
tion channel. In typical wireless channels, the performance
degradation due to the introduction of the PR precoder is
shown to be small compared with conventional systems.
We note here that for the case of real-valued constellations,
the WL receiver offers additional degrees of freedom that
are used to mitigate the ISI introduced by the PR precoder.
Therefore, WL filtering plays a crucial role in enabling low
PAPR waveform design.
We also show that the proposed technique can be applied
to symmetric Q-ary phase-shift-keying (PSK) systems
that use complex constellations. A PAPR reduction of
up to 3.0 dB is observed for quadrature PSK (QPSK)
and 2.5 dB for Q-PSK for Q > 8. Introduction of con-
stellation rotation is also shown to be useful for QPSK,
but this technique offered only a small amount of gain
for higher-order PSK. For the case of 16 quadrature
amplitude modulation (QAM), we observed only 0.5 dB
PAPR reduction.
For PSK systems employing circularly symmetric
complex-valued modulation alphabets, WL equalisation
does not provide any benefit over conventional equalisers
in a white noise channel with ISI [13]. Therefore, in this
paper, we consider only conventional MMSE [14], MMSE-
DFE receivers for PSK detection. Simulation shows that
both methods are not able to mitigate the ISI introduced
by the PR precoder fully. A signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
penalty in the range of 2.0–2.5 dB is observed for QPSK
and 8-PSK systems. However, in coded systems, advanced
receiver algorithms such as turbo equalisation may be able
reduce this penalty. This aspect needs further investigation.
We remark here that the proposed technique, which uses
a combination of PR precoding and constellation rota-
tion in DFT-precoded-OFDM systems, is a new method.
To the best of our knowledge, alternative methods that
reduce PAPR of DFT-precoded-OFDM without BW expan-
sion have not been proposed in the literature. Considering
the trade-off between PAPR reduction and the increase in
the BER, the proposed technique is most useful for DFT-
precoded-OFDMA systems employing binary phase-shift
keying (BPSK). In particular, this technique can be used
in power-limited systems where the additional power gain
obtained by low PAPR is useful in increasing the link
budget and the range.
The organisation of the paper is as follows. In
Section 2, we introduce the proposed transmitter structure.
In Section 2.1, the PR precoder coefficients are derived
from a linearised GMSK pulse, and the PAPR character-
istics are provided for BPSK, 4-ASK, QPSK, 8-PSK and
16-QAM modulation formats. In Section 3, we analyse the
WL MMSE receiver performance for the case of real con-
stellations. In Section 4, design details of WL MMSE-DFE
receiver is given. The complexity analysis is provided in
Section 5. In Section 6, we present BER simulation results
for BPSK, QPSK and 8-PSK modulation formats followed
by conclusions in Section 7.
2. TRANSMITTER
A conventional DFT-precoded-OFDMA transmitter (see
Figure 1) sends a block of M zero-mean, independent and
identically distributed real/complex modulation symbols
with E.ja.k/j2 / D 1, where k denotes the discrete time
index. The data stream a.k/ is precoded using a DFT as
M
X 1
j 2lk
A.l/ D a.k/e M ; l D 0; : : : ; M  1 (1)
kD0
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

input output
Sub−carrier
M−point DFT Mapping N−point IDFT

Figure 1. Conventional discrete Fourier transform (DFT) precoded orthogonal frequency division multiple access transmitter.

Figure 2. Discrete Fourier transform precoded orthogonal frequency division multiple access (DFT-precoded-OFDMA) transmitter
with partial response (PR) precoding.

The precoded data are mapped to a set of contiguous‡ sub- For the class of PR precoders considered in this paper,
carriers among the available set of N subcarriers. The time the angle  is optimised using simulation to minimise the
domain signal s.t / is obtained using an inverse discrete PAPR for a given modulation type. Note that introduction
time Fourier transform of phase rotation reduces the number of zero-crossings in
the modulated signal and as a result reduces the PAPR.
N1 CM
X 1
1 For systems employing real constellations, introduction of
sQ .t / D A.l  N1 /e j 2lf t ; t 2 Œ0;TOFDM ; 90°phase rotation reduces the PAPR considerably. How-
M
lDN1 ever, for the case of complex-valued modulation, phase
0 6 N1 6 N  M and N >M rotation is most useful PSK systems with low modulation
(2) order such as QPSK. For higher-order modulation sizes,
where l denotes the subcarrier index, N1 is the index of phase rotation provides little benefit because the constel-
the starting point for subcarrier mapping, f is the sub- lation is already dense (i.e., a constellation point and its
carrier spacing, and the signal spans over the finite time phase rotated version are close to each other). For the spe-
interval TOFDM , which is denoted as the OFDM symbol cial case of binary modulation, it is possible to obtain a
duration, and A.l/ D DFT.a.k//. A cyclic prefix is added signal with very low amplitude variations using a suitable
to the signal before transmission. For large values of M , choice of PR precoder. In the following, we propose a set of
the signal sQ .t / exhibits similar PAPR characteristics as that PR precoders that provide a reduction in PAPR compared
of conventional single-carrier modulation employing sinc with conventional DFT-precoded-OFDMA signal sQ .t / for
[3] pulse shaping. all cases considered in this paper.
The proposed transmitter modifies the baseband data
sequence to further reduce the PAPR using the following
2.1. Partial response precoders obtained
steps (see Figure 2):
from linearised Gaussian-minimum-shift
keying pulse
 A constellation rotation of  radians is applied
between successive data symbols to obtain a sequence
p Gaussian-minimum-shift keying is a continuous phase
c.k/ D e j k a.k/, where j D 1 and a.k/ is the
modulation signal with constant envelope. We begin with
input data sequence.
the aim to synthesise a linearised GMSK-like signal with
 A controlled amount of ISI is introduced into the
low PAPR using the DFT-precoded-OFDMA framework,
constellation rotated modulation sequence c.k/ by
without using excess BW. To this end, we begin with the
circularly convolving the sequence c.k/ with a PR
Laurent’s decomposition [5] to approximate the differen-
precoder p.k/ to obtain x.k/ D c.k/ ˇ p.k/, where
tially encoded GMSK signal in linearised form
ˇ denotes circular convolution operation. The PR
DFT-precoded-OFDMA signal defined as X
sl .t / D j k b.k/p0 .t  kT /; t 2 .1; 1/ (4)
N1 CM
X 1 kD0
1
s.t / D X .l/e j 2lf t ;
M
lDN1 (3) where b.k/ takes values from a BPSK constellation, 1=T
t 2 Œ0; TOFDM ; 0 6 N1 6 N  M is the data rate and the pulse p0 .t / is the principal pulse
in Laurent’s decomposition [5, 15] that is given in the
and N >M
Appendix. A set of pulses can be obtained by controlling
the free variable BT .
where X .l/ D DFT.x.k//.
In the proposed framework, the linearised GMSK pulse
p0 .t / is sampled at symbol rate to obtain the discrete time
‡
The discrete Fourier transform precoded data can also be mapped samples that are used as PR precoder coefficients. The set
to distributed subcarriers with equal subcarrier spacing spanning the of samples that are obtained by sampling p0 .t / at t D kT
entire bandwidth. where k 2 .: : : ; 2; 1; 0; 1; 2; : : :/ is denoted as the PR

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

Table I. Type A partial response precoder coefficients.
Number BT p.k /
Type A-2 BT D 0:3 [0.0007 0.2609 0.9285 0.2609 0.0007]
Type A-3 BT D 0:2 [0.0104 0.3514 0.86 0.3514 0.0104]
Table II. Type A partial response precoder coefficients.
Number BT p.k /
Type B-1 BT D1 [0.707 0.707]
Type B-2 BT D0:3 [0.0316 0.7070 0.7070 0.0316]
Type B-3 BT D0:2 [0.0004 0.0917 0.695 0.695 0.0917 0.0004]
precoder Type A and the set obtained for t D kT C .T =2/
is denoted as Type B precoder. More specifically, let
( To calculate the PAPR, we first generate a discrete time
p0 .t /jtDkT Type A
p0 .k/ D (5)
p0 .t /jtDkT C T Type B
2
denote T -spaced samples of the linearised GMSK pulse.
Note that the elements of the sequence p0 .k/ are trun-
cated to a suitable length by eliminating the coefficients
that take very small values. Because the sequence of the
proposed PR precoder coefficients p.k/ does not take neg-
ative values, it is obtained by mapping the elements of p0
starting from left to right. The proposed PR precoders are
explicitly defined in Tables I and II. Sampling the pulse at
t D kT and setting BT D 0:3, we obtain Type A-2 pre-
coder, whereas setting BT D 0:2 gives Type A-3 precoder.
Further, sampling the pulse at t D kT C .T =2/ and setting
BT D 1 give Type B-1 precoder, and for BT D 0:3 and
0.2, we obtain Types B-2 and B-3 precoders, respectively.
For BPSK signalling, we observe that introduction of
e j k.=2/ D j k constellation rotation and PR precod-
ing produces a linearised GMSK-like signal with low
amplitude variations. Although the proposed system shares
some commonalities with linearised GMSK/MSK, it is
fundamentally distinct from GMSK; linearised GMSK
pulse is a nonband-limited pulse whose spectral occupancy
exceeds beyond the Nyquist cut-off frequency, whereas
the proposed system synthesises a different pulse shap-
ing filter (a digital sinc filter convolved with PR precoder
response) that does not cause BW expansion compared
with conventional DFT-precoded-OFDMA. Moreover, lin-
earised GMSK has near unity (0 dB) PAPR, whereas
the PAPR of the proposed system will be shown to be
in the range of 1.0–2.0 dB. Although linearised GMSK
uses binary modulation, we show that the PR precoders
obtained from the linearised GMSK pulse also reduce the
PAPR for higher-order modulation alphabets employing
real/complex constellations when a suitable choice of  is
used. Simulation showed that  D =2 is a suitable choice
for real constellations whereas  D =Q provides a low
PAPR for Q-ary PSK employing symmetric constellations.
version of s.t /. We calculate the peak power, average sig-
nal power of the discrete time signal for each OFDM
symbol separately. The PAPR is recorded for each OFDM
symbol over 10 000 realisations. For all the cases shown in
Table I, the complementary cumulative distribution func-
tion of PAPR is plotted in Figures 3, 4 and 5. In the rest
of the discussion, we consider the PAPR measured at 0.01
complementary cumulative distribution function point.
For BPSK modulation, referring to Figure 3, for M D
1200, Type B-3 precoder has a PAPR of 1.52 dB, whereas
Type A-2 and Type B-1 have 2.39 and 2.09 dB PAPR,
respectively. Referring to Figure 4, for M D 12, all
the proposed PR precoders have similar PAPR char-
acteristics, and the PAPR variation is in the range of
1.0–2.0 dB. Compared with conventional DFT-precoded-
OFDMA employing QPSK modulation, which has a PAPR
of 7.6 dB, the reduction in PAPR of the proposed set of
precoders is quite significant. Next, the influence of con-
stellation rotation and PR precoding is shown separately in
Figure 5. It can be seen that both PR precoding and con-
stellation rotation features contribute to PAPR reduction

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
cdf

0.5
0.4 Type A−2
Type B−1
0.3 Type B−3
Type B−2
0.2 Type A−3
Conv. QPSK DFT−p−OFDMA
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PAPR (dB)

Figure 3. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for binary phase-shift keying,
M D 1200. QPSK, quadrature phase-shift keying; DFT-p-OFDMA, discrete Fourier transform precoded orthogonal frequency division
multiple access.

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

1
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
cdf

0.5
0.4 Type A−2
Type B−1
0.3 Type B−3
Type B−2
0.2 Type A−3
Conv. QPSK DFT−p−OFDMA
0.1
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PAPR (dB)

Figure 4. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for binary phase-shift keying,
M D 12.

100

10−1
cdf

10−2

BPSK, zero deg

BPSK, 90 deg
BPSK, Type A−2, zero deg
10−3
BPSK, Type A−2, 90 deg

10−4−1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
PAPR (dB)

Figure 5. Peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) comparison with and without partial response recoding, M D 12.

when they are used independently; however, the maximum
benefit is obtained when both techniques are used together.
For 4-ASK, referring to Figure 6, we see that with-
out using Type A-2 PR precoding, constellation rotation
( D =2) alone reduces the PAPR by 2.5 dB. A total of
4.4 dB PAPR reduction is obtained when both PR precod-
ing and constellation rotation methods are used together.
For the case of QPSK modulation, simulation shows that
the optimum constellation rotation is  D =4. In this
case, combined use of Type A-2 PR precoding and con-
stellation rotation offers nearly 3.0 dB PAPR reduction
(see Figure 7). Comparing 4-ASK and QPSK, the proposed
system offers a PAPR of 4.4 dB for QPSK, whereas 4-ASK
has 5.5 dB PAPR.
For 8-PSK modulation, referring to Figure 8, we see that
constellation rotation provides a small benefit only. This is
generally true for high-density complex constellations for
Q > 8. However, Type A-2 PR precoder offers approxi-
mately 2.4 dB PAPR reduction. Similar results are obtained
for a PSK system of arbitrary modulation size employing
circularly symmetric constellation. However, the proposed
PR precoding methods (and/or constellation rotation) are
not very effective in reducing the PAPR for higher-order
QAM systems. For the case of 16-QAM, we observed only
0.5 dB PAPR reduction (see Figure 9). In general, for the
case of higher-order QAM, the overall PAPR appears to be
dominated by the amplitude variations of the constellation
points themselves. Introduction of PR precoding (and/or

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DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

100

10−1

cdf

10−2

4ASK, w/o PR precoder, zero deg

4ASK, w/o PR precoder, 90 deg
4ASK, Type A−2, 0 deg
10−3 4ASK, Type A−2, 90 deg

10−4
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
PAPR (dB)

Figure 6. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for 4ASK, M D 120.

100
QPSK, w/o PR precoder, 0−deg
QPSK, w/o PR precoder, 45−deg
QPSK, Type A−2, 0−deg
QPSK, Type A−2, 45−deg

10−1
cdf

10−2

10−3

10−42 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PAPR (dB)

Figure 7. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for quadrature phase-shift
keying (QPSK), M D 120.

constellation rotation) did not provide much benefit in this
case. Therefore, the proposed methods are effective for
constellations that do not have amplitude variations.
Next, we examine the BER performance of some of the
proposed modulation formats. In particular, we develop
WL MMSE and WL MMSE-DFE receiver algorithms
for real-valued signalling. For detection of complex-
valued constellations, we use conventional MMSE and
MMSE-DFE receiver techniques proposed in [16, 17]. In
the following, we discuss implementation of WL receivers,
whereas details of conventional receivers are omitted
for brevity.

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DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

100
8PSK, w/o PR precoder, zero deg
8PSK, w/o PR precoder, 22.5 deg
8PSK, Type A−2, zero deg
10−1
8PSK, Type A−2, 22.5 deg

cdf
10−2

10−3

10−42 3 4 5 6 7 8
PAPR (dB)

Figure 8. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for 8-PSK, M D 120.

100
16QAM, w/o PR precoding
16QAM, Type A−2

10−1
cdf

10−2

10−3

10−41 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
PAPR (dB)

Figure 9. Complementary cumulative distribution function (cdf) of peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for 16-QAM, M D 120.

3. WIDELY LINEAR FREQUENCY  The receiver applies a constellation de-rotation step to

DOMAIN
MINIMUM-MEAN-SQUARE-ERROR
EQUALISER
The receiver front end operations such as sampling,
synchronisation, channel estimation and subcarrier de-
mapping operations are similar to conventional DFT-
precoded-OFDMA system. The WL receiver exploits the
real-valued nature of the modulation alphabets to miti-
gate the ISI introduced by the PR precoder. We consider
detection of ASK that employs real-valued modulation
alphabets that employ 90° constellation rotation. Before
applying WL filtering, the receiver goes through the fol-
lowing steps:
obtain a signal with real-valued modulation alphabets.
Because we deal with signals in frequency domain,
the constellation de-rotation is equivalent to circular
frequency shifting operation.
 Conventionally, a time domain WL receiver [13]
jointly filters the signal and its complex conjugate.
Equivalently, in frequency domain, the WL receiver
filters the signal and its complex-conjugated and time-
reversed copy.
We begin with the equivalent baseband frequency domain
signal of interest
Y .l/ D H .l/X .l/ C N .l/; l D 0; : : : ; M  1

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

where H .l/ D DF T Œh.k/ is the frequency domain chan- we have

nel and h.k/ is the impulse response of the time domain
   
propagation channel, N .l/ is the thermal noise contained YO .l/ HO .l/PO .l/
in lth subcarrier with variance of N0 =2 per dimension  D A.l/
O
Y .M  l/ H .M  l/PO  .M  l/
O 
and X .l/ D P .l/C .l/ where P .l/ D DF T Œp.k/ is  
the frequency response of the PR precoder, and C .l/ D NO .l/
C (10)
DF T Œj k a.k/. Writing j k as e j 2k.l0 =M / , where l0 D NO  .M  l/
M =4, corresponds to a frequency shifting operation by
M =4 samples in frequency domain. Therefore, C .l/ can With the use of compact vector notation, Y.l/ N D
be represented as N
H.l/A.l/ N
C N.l/. N
Let Z.l/ N Y.l/
D W.l/ N represent the
N
decision variable. The WL filter W.l/ jointly filters the
M
X 1 
ll0
 frequency domain signal YO .l/ and its complex-conjugated
j 2k
C .l/ D a.k/e M
(6) and frequency-reversed copy YO  .M  l/ to obtain the
kD0 N
scalar decision variable Z.l/. An estimate of the input data
D A.l M l0 / (7) is obtained by taking the IDFT as a.k/
N N
D IDF T ŒZ.l/.
With the use of MMSE estimation [18], the vector-valued
where M represents modulo-M subtraction operation. In MMSE filter is given by
Equation (7), C .l/ is represented as a frequency-shifted
version of A.l/ with a frequency shift of M =4 samples. N  .l/
H
N
W.l/ D (11)
Furthermore, because a.k/ is a real-valued data sequence, N  .l/H.l/
N
N0 C H
the DFT of a.k/ exhibits conjugate symmetry, that is,
A .M  l/ D A.l/. The receiver obtains an estimate
of H .l/ using conventional methods. For instance, pilot
N
where W.l/ D ŒWN .l/; WN  .M  l/. Note that the sec-
sequences embedded in the middle of each data packet ond feed-forward filter (FFF) is a complex-conjugated and
can be used to enable channel estimation. In the rest of frequency-reversed copy of the first filter. The MMSE for
the paper, it is assumed that ideal knowledge of H .l/ is this case is expressed as
available at the receiver. Because P .l/ is a deterministic
filter, the total channel response H .l/P .l/ can be recon- M 1
1 X N0
structed at the receiver. The first step in the WL receiver MSE D 
(12)
M N N
is to de-shift the received signal by M =4 samples to ren- lD0 N0 C H .l/H.l/
der the modulation data to be a real-valued data sequence.
After shifting Y .l/ by l0 samples and using the fact that Note that
C .l ˚M l0 / D A.l/, we obtain
N  .l/ D ŒHO  .l/PO  .l/; HO .M  l/PO .M  l/
H (13)
YO .l/ D HO .l/PO .l/A.l/
N  .l/H.l/
H N DjHO .l/PO .l/j2
C NO .l/ (8)
C jHO  .M  l/PO  .M  l/j2 (14)

With the use of this result, the MSE can be expressed as

M 1
1 X N0
MSE D (15)
M
lD0
N0 C jH .l/P .l/j C jHO  .M  l/PO  .M  l/j2
O O 2

where YO .l/ D Y .l ˚M l0 /, HO .l/ D H .l ˚M l0 /, NO .l/ D

N .l ˚M l0 / and PO .l/ D P .l ˚M l0 /. Applying complex 3.1. Mean square error in additive white
conjugation and frequency reversal operations on Y .l/ and Gaussian noise channel
using the property A .M  l/ D A.l/, we obtain
For the special case of Type B-1 PR precoder, we have
YO  .M  l/ D HO  .M  l/PO  .M  l/A.l/ h i
1 j 2l
C NO  .M  l/ (9) P .l/ D DF T Œp.k/ D p 1Ce M
2
1 h j 2l
i
Observing the signals represented in Equations (8) and (9), PO .l/ D p 1  je M

we note that two copies of the frequency domain modu- 2

1 h j 2l
i
lation signal A.l/ are obtained with distinct channel coef- O 
P .M  l/ D p 1 C je M
ficients. Combining Equations (8) and (9) in vector form, 2

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

Table III. Post-SNR in decibel. N

where b.k/, k D 1; 2; : : : ; N b, is the time domain FBF
Type B-1 10 of length N b taps. The MSE is given by MSEDFE D
Type B-2 10.00 E je.k/j2 . Symbol decisions are obtained using a slicer
Type B-3 9.88 after eliminating the ISI caused by N b taps using the past
Type A-2 9.984 decisions. To obtain the FFF and FBF coefficients, we
Type A-3 9.76 adopt a WL generalisation of the MMSE-DFE receiver
algorithm proposed in [17] where the FFF is imple-
mented in frequency domain and the FBF is implemented
Substituting these expressions in Equation (15), we obtain

M 1
1 X N0
MSEType B1 D  l
 
M O 2 O 2 j 2 M
jHO .l/j2  jHO .M  l/j2
lD0 N0 C kH .l/j C jH .M  l/j C < je

where <./ denotes the real part of a complex num-

ber. If the propagation channel is nonfrequency selective,
in time domain. Detailed expressions for FFF and FBF
that is, HO .l/ D HO .M  l/ D h, the MSE becomes
are provided in [17]. Alternatively, the FFF can also be
MSEWL flat D .N0 =2/=Œjhj2 C .N0 =2/, which is inde-
obtained using the approach presented in [16]. It is impor-
pendent of the coefficients of the considered Type B-1
tant to note that in typical frequency-selective channels, the
PR precoder. The unbiased [18] post-processing SNR at
time domain channel impulse response of the propagation
the output of the MMSE receiver defined as post-SNR D
channel, that is, h.k/, k D 0; 1; : : : ; M  1, generally has
.1=MSE/  1 is given in Table III for other choice of pre-
length of M taps due to the rectangular windowing oper-
codes at SNRD10 dB. The degradation is within 0.25 dB
ation inherent in DFT-precoded-OFDMA. However, only
for all the considered cases. However, in the presence of
the first few taps carry dominant energy, and the rest take
ISI caused by the frequency-selective channel, the PR pre-
very small values. To reduce implementation complexity,
coder causes certain degradation in performance compared
it is desirable to limit N b to a small value. Appropriate
with the case without PR precoding. The performance is
choice of N b depends on the propagation channel type and
assessed using simulation in Section 6.
the value of M .
Note that the FBF b.l/ N is circularly convolved with
4. FREQUENCY DOMAIN the data a.k/. In detecting the first data symbol a.1/, the
WIDELY LINEAR received signal is corrupted by the ISI caused by the last
MINIMUM-MEAN-SQUARE-ERROR N b data symbols of a.k/. These decisions are not available
DECISION FEEDBACK EQUALISER to DFE unless the transmitter appends N b known symbols
at the end of the packet. Such an operation is impractical
In the proposed WL MMSE-DFE receiver, the received because it increases the overhead significantly for large val-
signal and its conjugated-time-reversed replicas are filtered ues of N b. This problem is alleviated using a two-stage
using two FFFs receiver. In the proposed implementation, we use a WL
MMSE to obtain hard decisions for the last N b symbols of
O
Z.l/ D WN .l/YN .l/ C WN  .M  l/YO  .M  l/ a.k/ in the first stage, and these estimates are used to ini-
N Y.l/;
D W.l/ N l D 1; 2; : : : ; M tialise the DFE in the second stage. Because the FFF of WL
MMSE is already contained in the FFF expression for the
where we use compact vector notation to represent the WL MMSE-DFE [17, 19] and because these coefficients
N
vector-valued FFF as W.l/ D ŒWN .l/; WN  .M  l/. The are already available to the receiver, the additional WL
ISI is eliminated using a feedback filter (FBF) as MMSE receiver module can be implemented with a moder-
ate increase in overall complexity. Similar approach is used
Q
Z.l/ O
D Z.l/ N
 B.l/A.l/ in [17] to implement conventional MMSE-DFE receivers.
N
where B.l/ is the frequency domain FBF. The error signal
is defined as 5. IMPLEMENTATION COMPLEXITY
 
N D Z.l/
E.l/ O N
 1 C B.l/ A.l/ The proposed method introduces additional complexity
compared with conventional DFT-precoded-OFDMA. At
In time domain, the transmit side, there is increased complexity due to
(a) constellation rotation operation and (b) PR precod-
Nb
X ing. Note that PR precoding operation requires circu-
e.k/ D z.k/
O  N ˇ a.k  l/  a.k/
b.l/ lar convolution of data with a PR precoder. Among the
lD1 proposed precoders, Type B-1 precoder, which has two

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

equal taps, has low implementation complexity because it
can be implemented using additions only. The amplitude
scaling by factor 0:707 is common to the entire signal and
therefore can be implemented in later stages as part of
transmit power scaling. Other proposed precoders require
both multiplication and addition operations. The receiver
requires the following additional operations compared with
a conventional receiver:
complex-conjugated and frequency-reversed copy of
the first FFF WN .l/ to reduce complexity.
 Computation of FFF incurs additional complex-
ity because it involves sum of two terms (see
Equation (14)) corresponding to the signal and its
complex-conjugated copies.
 In case of DFE, computation of FBF does not require
extra computational complexity compared with the
conventional system.

 Construction of equivalent channels H .l/P .l/ and

H .l/P .l/: Note that construction of H .l/P .l/
6. BIT ERROR RATE RESULTS
involves M multiplications one for each value of l.
The BER performance is reported for a DFT-precoded-
Alternatively, if the propagation channel is estimated
OFDM system with a subcarrier spacing of 15 KHz.
using time domain techniques, the estimated channel
Ideal channel knowledge is assumed at the receiver. The
impulse response h.k/ can be circularly convolved
BER is computed over 3000 independent channel real-
with the PR precoder p.k/ before taking the DFT of
isations. DFT-precoded-OFDMA without PR precoding
the equivalent time domain channel h.k/ ˇ p.k/.
with conventional MMSE receiver is used as the base-
 Constellation de-rotation of both received data Y .l/
line for all comparisons. Results are reported for additive
as well the received estimated equivalent channel
white Gaussian noise and the Ped-B [20] channel model,
H .l/P .l/ is implemented through appropriate fre-
which represents a typical urban channel model with high
quency de-shifting operations to obtain YO .l/ and
amount of frequency selectivity. We report results for
HO .l/PO .l/.
two subcarrier sizes M D 12 and 128 that represent low
 Complex conjugation and frequency reversal of
and high frequency selective cases. In all the figures, the
the received signal YO .l/ and HO .l/PO .l/ to obtain
BER comparisons are made with modulation size fixed to
YO  .M  l/, HO .l/PO .l/.
same value.
 In case of both WL MMSE LE and WL MMSE
DFE receivers, the received signal and its conjugated-
frequency-reversed replicas are filtered using two 6.1. Binary phase-shift keying
FFFs, whereas a conventional equaliser uses a sin-
gle FFF. However, the coefficients of the second This section discusses the performance of proposed meth-
FFF WN  .M  l/ can be obtained by taking the ods for the case of BPSK signalling. Figure 10 shows

100

WL LE, w/o PR precoder

Conv LE, w/o PR precoder
WL LE, Type A−2
WL LE, Type A−3
WL LE, Type B−1
WL LE, Type B−2
WL LE, Type B−3
10−1
BER

10−2

10−3
0 5 10 15
SNR

Figure 10. Bit error rate (BER) in PED-B channel with minimum mean square error, M D 12. SNR, signal-to-noise ratio; PR,
partial response.

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

100
WL LE w/o PR precoder
Conv LE w/o PR precoder
WL LE, Type A−2
WL LE, Type B−1
WL LE, Type B−2
BER 10−1 WL LE, Type B−3
WL LE, Type A−3

10−2

10−30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
SNR

Figure 11. Bit error rate (BER) in PED-B channel with minimum mean square error, M D 128. SNR, signal-to-noise ratio; PR,
partial response.

100

10−1
BER

WL DFE w/o PR precoder

Conv DFE w/o PR precoder
−2 WL DFE Type A−2
10 WL DFE Type A−3
WL DFE Type B−1
WL DFE Type B−2
WL DFE Type B−3

10−3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
SNR

Figure 12. Bit error rate (BER) in PED-B channel with minimum-mean-square-error decision feedback equaliser (DFE), M D 128.
SNR, signal-to-noise ratio; PR, partial response.

results for M D 12 that corresponds to 180 KHz BW. In
this case, the channel has low frequency selectivity over the
band of interest. Because of this, the performance differ-
ence between WL MMSE and WL MMSE-DFE is found
to be very small. Therefore, we present results comparing
conventional and WL MMSE receivers only. We see that
WL MMSE with Type A-2 precoder performs nearly same
as the conventional MMSE receiver without PR precod-
ing. The performance loss of remaining precoders is well
within 0.2–0.4 dB of Type A-2 with WL MMSE receiver.
However, WL MMSE without PR precoding outperforms
Type A-2 with WL MMSE by 0.35 dB.
In Figures 11 and 12, results are shown for subcarrier
allocation of M D 128. In this case, the channel becomes
highly selective over the band of interest. In all consid-
ered cases, the WL MMSE-DFE provides a significant
gain over WL MMSE receiver as well as the conventional
MMSE/MMSE-DFE methods. The proposed receiver is
able handle the ISI generated by the PR precoder without
causing high performance penalty. Compared with WL
MMSE without PR precoding, the loss due to the introduc-
tion of precoding is less than 0.8 dB. Note that in all cases,
conventional MMSE with PR precoding performs poorly
because of excessive noise enhancement. Despite the pres-
ence of ISI caused by the frequency-selective channel, the
performance of WL MMSE with PR precoding is similar
to conventional MMSE without PR precoding.
Without PR precoding, WL MMSE shows an advantage
over conventional MMSE. This gain stems from the fact
that WL MMSE inherently has lower noise enhancement
and lower MSE than conventional MMSE [13]. Remark-
ably, even with PR precoding, WL MMSE performs very
close to the baseline receiver. In frequency-selective chan-
nels, Type A-2 PR precoder has the least BER compared
with all other considered choices. The BER of Type B-3
precoder is approximately 0.8 dB worse than that of Type
A-2. Note that Type B-1 precoder does not cause noise
enhancement in flat channels; however, its BER becomes

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

100

LE

MMSE−DFE

MMSE−DFE ideal

MFB

BER

10−1

10−2
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
SNR

Figure 13. Bit error rate (BER) in additive white Gaussian noise channel for quadrature phase-shift keying, M D 12. SNR,
signal-to-noise ratio; LE, linear equaliser; MMSE-DFE, minimum-mean-square-error decision feedback equaliser; MFB, matched
filter bound.

worse than other precoders in a frequency-selective chan-
nel. Overall, Type A-2 PR precoder appears to be a good
choice for reducing PAPR and in minimising the BER.
Similar performance differences are observed for higher
values of M . We also remark here that the WL equalis-
ers provide similar performance benefits for general Q-ary
ASK systems employing real constellations.
6.2. Bit error rate performance of
quadrature phase-shift keying and
8-phase-shift keying
In Figures 13 and 14, we compare the BER of QPSK and
8-PSK system employing Type A-2 PR precoder in addi-
tive white Gaussian noise channel without fading. In both
cases, the MMSE linear equaliser has up to 1.0 dB SNR
loss over MMSE-DFE, whereas MMSE-DFE has 2.0 dB
degradation compared with a ISI free receiver modelled
using the matched filter bound. For QPSK, the use of PR
precoding and constellation rotation provides nearly 3.0 dB
PAPR reduction over conventional DFT-precoded-OFDM
but losses 2.0 dB SNR because of the ISI introduced by the
PR precoder. For 8-PSK, the reduction in PAPR is nearly
2.5 dB, whereas the loss caused by the ISI is close to 2.0 dB
compared with ISI free case. In Figure 15, the BER for
8-PSK employing Type A-2 PR precoder is shown for
Ped-B case. The degradation compared with the case with-
out PR precoding is in the range of 2.0–2.5 dB. For both
QPSK and 8-PSK case, we observe that MMSE-DFE is
unable to mitigate the ISI caused by the PR precoder fully.
Therefore, to exploit the low PAPR properties of PSK sys-
tems employing PR precoding, more advanced receivers
that can handle the ISI introduced by the PR precoder
should be investigated further. Techniques such as reduced
state sequence estimation [21] and turbo equalisation are
two candidates in this direction.
Additional Remarks
For higher-order modulation, standard Q-ary PSK con-
stellations have higher minimum distance compared with
ASK with equal number of bits per symbol. Therefore,
Q-ary PSK provides higher spectral efficiency compared
with Q-ary ASK. However, in low SNR regime, BPSK,
which uses a real constellation, can be useful. For instance,
the long-term evolution standard, which uses a link adap-
tation algorithm, assigns QPSK modulation with a low rate
channel code (with bit-level data repetition) when the SNR
of the link degrades certain threshold, for example, 0 dB
or less. For such low-operating SNR, the system can alter-
natively use the proposed method using BPSK modulation,
whereas the channel code rate can be adjusted to meet the
required target SNR. Because QPSK and BPSK methods
require the same energy per bit, the additional power gain
obtained through PAPR reduction can be used to increase
the cell coverage.
7. CONCLUSIONS
Partial response DFT-precoded-OFDMA is proposed. This
technique reduces the PAPR by using a combination of
constellation rotation and PR precoding. The class of PR
precoders obtained from linearised GMSK pulse is shown
to provide considerable reduction in PAPR compared with

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

100
LE
MMSE−DFE
MMSE−DFE ideal
MFB

BER

10−1

10−2
0 5 10 15
SNR

Figure 14. Bit error rate (BER) in additive white Gaussian noise channel for 8-PSK, M D 12. PSK, phase-shift keying; SNR,
signal-to-noise ratio; LE, linear equaliser; MMSE-DFE, minimum-mean-square-error decision feedback equaliser; MFB, matched
filter bound.

100
MMSE
MMSE DFE
MMSE DFE ideal
MMSE DFE ideal w/o PR precoder
MMSE DFE w/o PR precoder

10−1
BER

10−2

10−3
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
SNR

Figure 15. Bit error rate (BER) in PED-B channel for 8-PSK, M D 128. PSK, phase-shift keying; SNR, signal-to-noise ratio; MMSE DFE,
minimum-mean-square-error decision feedback equaliser; PR, partial response.

conventionally used methods. In particular, for BPSK mod-
ulation, the Type A-2 PR precoder, which is obtained using
BT D 0:3 and  D 0, is shown to be useful in reduc-
ing the PAPR and in minimising the BER in frequency-
selective channels. Widely linear equalisers, which jointly
filter the received signal and its complex conjugate, play an
important role in low-complexity receiver design. The BER
degradation due to the introduction proposed PR precoder
is shown to be acceptable. In typical wireless channels,
performance of the proposed method with low-complexity
WL MMSE/MMSE DFE equalisers is close to a baseline
system, which employs conventional MMSE/MMSE-DFE
equalisers without PR precoding. The proposed techniques
are also shown to be useful in reducing the PAPR of Q-ary
ASK constellation that employs real constellations.
A constellation rotation of =4 combined with Type
A-2 PR precoder reduces the PAPR of QPSK by nearly
3.0 dB. However, the ISI caused by the PR precoder led
to 2.0 dB loss in BER when a conventional MMSE-DFE
receiver used. In case of 8-PSK modulation, constella-
tion rotation has little effect on PAPR, whereas Type
A-2 PR precoder reduces the PAPR by approximately

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2012) © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 K. Kuchi

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DOI: 10.1002/ett