An Algorithm for Reducing the Peak to Average Power Ratio in a
Multicarrier Communications System
Vahid Tarokh
AT&T Labs-Research
180 Park Avenue
Florham Park, New Jersey 07932
tarokh@research.att.com
Abstract - O n e of t h e m a i n i m p l e m e n t a t i o n
disadvantages of a multicarrier c o m m u n i c a t i o n
s y s t e m is t h e possibly high peak to average
power r a t i o of t h e t r a n s m i t t e d signals.
O n e proposed solution is given by J o n e s a n d
Wilkinson El]. It is based o n a p p l y i n g a specific
phase shift ( n o t d e p e n d e n t o n t h e codeword) to
each dimension of t h e t r a n s m i t t e d codewords.
T h e s e phase s h i f t s a r e known b o t h to t h e trans-
m i t t e r a n d t h e receiver. T h u s t h e phase s h i f t s
can b e c o m p e n s a t e d for i n t h e receiver with-
o u t changing t h e d i s t a n c e p r o p e r t i e s of t h e code.
Therefore, n e i t h e r t h e r a t e n o r t h e c o d e perfor-
m a n c e is sacrificed. T h e phases need o n l y o n c e
be c o m p u t e d off-line a n d t h e complexity of t h e
s y s t e m does n o t increase.
Our c o n t r i b u t i o n is to provide a n a l g o r i t h m
to c o m p u t e t h e phases t h a t minimize t h e max-
i m u m peak to average power r a t i o t a k e n over
all possible t r a n s m i t t e d signals. T h e new algo-
r i t h m enables us to a p p l y t h e Jones-Wilkinson
m e t h o d to various m e d i u m l e n g t h as well as long
codes of practical interest, a c o m p u t a t i o n a l t a s k
f o r which n o solution was known before.
W e a p p l y our a l g o r i t h m to s o m e of t h e codes
adapted f o r use i n t h e physical layer of f u t u r e
wireless local a r e a networks by t h e ETSI BRAN
Hiperlan-I1 s t a n d a r d i z a t i o n c o m m i t t e e . We re-
p o r t t h e c o m p u t e d r e d u c t i o n s i n peak t o average
power ratio.
I. INTRODUCTION
Multicarrier communications (OFDM) has employed
for wire-line communications and has also been adapted
for use in the future wireless local area networks. In such
a system (Figure I), the input bits are encoded into con-
stellation symbols using a code C. Then N constellation
symbols are provided to the input of a discrete Fourier
transform (DFT) by a serial to parallel block. The out-
put of the DFT is multiplexed and transmitted over the
channel (after modulation). The receiver performs the
inverse operations. First the received signal is demulti-
plexed and fed into the inverse DFT (IDFT) block. A
parallel to serial block converts the output of IDFT to
a serial sequence and the decoder provides the output
bit stream.
0-7803-5565-2/99/$10.0001999 lEEE
680
Hamid Jafarkhani
AT&T Labs - Research
100 Schulz Drive
Red Bank, NJ 07701
hamid@research.att.com
One of the main implementation disadvantages of
OFDM is the high peak to average power ratio (PAPR)
of the transmitted signals. This forces the use of power
amplifiers with large linear range which translates into
higher cost. In this light, any reduction of the peak to
average power ratio of the transmitted signals can be of
importance in engineering OFDM systems.
In this paper, we use the Jones-Wilkinson phase shift
method [l] for a given code C. The block diagram of the
system is given in Figure 2 . However, unlike [I],we pro-
vide a polynomial time algorithm for determining the
required optimal phase shifts. The new algorithm en-
ables us to apply the Jones-Wilkinson method to various
medium length as well as long codes of practical interest,
a computational task for which no solution was known
before.
We apply our algorithm to some of the codes adapted
for use in the physical layer of future wireless local area
networks by the ETSI BRAN Hiperlan-I1 standardiza-
tion committee. We report the computed reductions in
peak to average power ratio.
The organization of the paper is as follows. In Section
11, we review the communication model, formulate the
problem and establish the notation. Section 111 proposes
our proposed algorithm. Some simulation results are
provided in Section V.
11. THESYSTEM
MODEL
The model of a multicarrier communication system is
given next. At each time T = O,T,2 7 , . . . blocks BT of
k bits arrive at the encoder. These k bits are encoded as
a sequence of N constellation symbols from a constella-
tion Q with 2= elements. The admissible sequences are
called codewords, and the ensemble of all possible code-
words is a code C of rate R = k / N . For the simplicity of
presentation, we will assume without loss of generality
that the elements of Q have equal energy normalized to
be one.
Upon processing the k input bits BT,the output
of the encoder is a sequence of N constellation sym-
bols C O , c1, . . , C N - 1 . This codeword goes through a se-
+
rial to parallel converter and a DFT (discrete Fourier
transform) device producing a sequence of symbols
CO c1I . ’ ’ 9 C N - 1 .
 Then
N-1
C1 = ciexp[-2dij/N],
i=O
for 1 = 0 , 1 , 2 , . . . , N - 1, where j = 2/7T.
This sequence is the input to the RF chain which
produces the transmitted signal. The transmitted signal
at time t is then given by
for 0 5 t 5 $, where fo is the carrier frequency, fs is
the bandwidth of each tone, and R(z) denotes the real
part of z . The relation between the quantities fs and
7 depends on whether a guard time is assigned, or a
cyclic prefix is used and these details have no bearing
upon the method presented in this paper. However, we
note that fs = 1/T is commonly assumed in an ideal
+
situation We write c z = d, e,j, where d, and e , are
the real and imaginary parts of the symbol c , , thus
N-1
~ ( t=) +
[d2c0s(2n(fo z f s ) t ) + e2szn(2.rr(fo+ zfs)t)l.
2=0
The receiver receives the signal S ( t ) perturbed by
noise. The RF chain at the receiver down-converts, pro-
cesses the received data and obtains estimates of the
parameters Ct,Z = 0 , 1 , . . . , N - 1. The receiver then
applies an IDFT on these estimates and generates es-
timates of C O , c l , . . . , CN-1 from which it extracts the
block BT of input bits.
However, there are input bits b,, z = 0 , + . , N - 1 for
which the terms in (2) add constructively. For instance
for the BPSK constellation, the all zero input bit stream
000' . . O is mapped to the sequence of all ones producing
+
~ E ~ ' c o s ( 2 5 ~ ( fzfs)t)
o at the output of the transmit-
ter RF chain. This signal has its peak power N 2 at time
t = 0. Thus the peak to average signal power ratio of
the transmitted signals can be as large as 2N for the
BPSK constellation.
For any sequence c = c o c l . . .C N - 1 , we will denote
by PAPR(c) the peak to average power ratio of the cor-
responding signal S ( t ) in the range 0 5 t < k. For a
code C the peak to average power ratio of C is defined to
be the maximum peak to average power ratio amongst
the codewords of C. That is
PAPR(C) = max[PAPR(c)]. (3)
C€C
The peak to average power ratio problem can now be
formulated.
Statement of The Problem: For a given transmis-
sion rate and a certain desired error protection level,
design an encoder C such that PAPR(C) is minimized.
68 1
I11 The Method of Jones and
Wilkinson
The choice of a code to provide a certain level of error
protection at a given rate is the topic of coding tech-
niques and is outside the scope of this paper. We as-
sume that a coding expert has produced various can-
didate codes that have the desired transmission rate as
well as a certain desired error protection level. For each
candidate code C the method we propose reduces the
PAPR(C) without reducing the rate or error protec-
tion capability of C and without increasing its decoding
complexity. The method is applied to each possible code
and the one which minimizes the peak to average power
ratio is selected.
Consider a code C with codewords of length N .
For a codeword c = cocl . . . c N - 1 , we will refer to
C O , c l , . . . , CN-1 as respectively the zero-th, the first, . . .,
and the ( N - 1)-th coordinates of C. To decrease the
peak to average power ratio, Jones and Wilkinson [l]
proposed that the i-th coordinate of all codewords of C
be shifted by a phase 4;known both to the transmit-
ter and t,he receiver. Since the i-th coordinate of every
codewords is phase-shifted by the same fixed angle I$;,
these phase shifts can be compensated for in the receiver
following the application of the IDFT. Thus these phase
shifts do not change the error correction capability, the
rate of the encoder nor the decoding complexity of the
receiver. Following these initial phase shifts, any arbi-
trary codeword c = cocl . . . CN-1 is mapped into
CO exp(j4o) c1 exp(j4i) . . . C N - I exp(j4iv-1).
We let C(&, 4 1 , ' . . ,c$N-~) denote the set of phase
shifted codewords.
The transmit,ted signal s ( t , 40,41,. . . , ~ N - I ) is
for 0 5 t 5 l / f s .
<
Assuming that = f o / f s >> 1, it is well-known that
the average power of s ( t , 4 0 , 4 1 , .. . , ~ N - I ) is k$ =
N- 1
Thus the peak to average power ratio of
the signal s ( t , 40,411, . . . , ~ N - I is
) given by
PAPR(c(40,41,..-,4~-1),6)
=
2 max
R (E:;' c, exp[-(aT(fo + zfs)t + 4 , ~ ) ~
OStSl N
which only depends on the parameters of the OFDM
system, the codeword cocl . . . C N - ~ and the phases
407 4 1 1 . ' ' , 4N-1.
The important insight of Jones and Wilkinson [l] is
that following an appropriate choice of the phase shifts,
the code C(40, 41 , . . . ,~ N - I )can have a lower peak to
average power ratio than C. In fact, for any code C, we
should choose $ 0 , $ 1 , . . . , $ ~ - 1 such that the peak to
average power ratio of C($O,$ 1 , . . . ,$ ~ - 1 ) is minimized.
In other words,
C)
argrninPAPR(C($o,#l,-..,$N-l),
must be computed.
The minimizing values $0,41, . . . , 4 ~ - 1need only be
computed once and they can be tabulated for various
codes of interest. Because these values are computed off-
line, this computation does not add to the complexity
of the transmitter or the receiver. It remains to design
an algorithm for computing these minimizing values.
IV The Proposed Algorithm
A The Instantaneous Peak to Aver-
age Power Ratio
We observe that
PAPR(c) = 2 max g ( t , C, c ) ,
O<t<l
where
Let
for 0 5 t 5 1. We refer to g ( t , 6, c ) as the instantaneous
peak to average power ratio of the codeword c and to
g ( t , C ) as the instantaneous peak to average power ratio
of the code C. We focus on algorithmic computation of
these functions.
The next Theorem provides a geometric interpreta-
tion of the value of instantaneous peak to average power
ratio at time t and will turn out to be very important
for computation. The theorem has an analog for QAM
constellations [3].
Theorem IV.l Let C denote a code whose codewords
have equal energy. Let g ( t , (J) be as defined by Equation
(4). For each t , the value o f g ( t , C ) is attained by the
codeword c which is the closest t o or the farthest code-
word from the vector w ( t , <) given by
(exp(Zot + $o).i,exp(Clt + h).i,.. . , exp(Cnr-lt + #N--l).i),
where C1 = 2n(C + i) f o r 0 5 i 5 N - 1.
Proof: For any vectors x = ( x o , x ~ , . . . , x N -and
~) y =
c:;'
( y o , y l , . . . , yrv-1) let x'y = xigi denote the inner
product of x and y. We can now rewrite Ng(t,C) =
P ( C . C)V.
682
Let c denote the codeword for which g ( t , < ) is at-
tained. >
If W(c . w ( t , C ) ) 0, then c maximizes
W ( c . w ( t , C ) ) amongst all codewords. This means that
/IC - w(t,C)1I2 = 2N - 28(c . w ( t , C ) ) is minimized.
Alternatively, if W(c . w ( t , C ) ) < 0 , then c minimizes
W(c . w ( t , C ) ) amongst all codewords. This means that
IIc - w ( t , C)llz = 2 N - 2 8 ( c .w ( t , 6)) is maximized. 0
Definition IV.l For a n y code C , we define
-c = {- c , I c E C}.
W e refer to -c as the negative of c and -C as the neg-
atave code of C . A code C is symmetric if -c E C when-
ever c E C.
Corollary IV.l Let C denote a code whose codewords
have equal energy. Let g ( t , C ) be as defined by Equation
(4)-
e For each t , the value of g ( t , 5) is attained either
by the codeword c E C closest to w ( t , 6) or by the
negative of the codeword c E -C closest to w ( t , Cl.
Equivalently, the value o f g ( t , 6) is attained either
by the codeword c E C closest to w ( t , C ) or by the
codeword c E C closest to -w(t,C). If C is sym-
metric, the value o f g ( t , 6) is attained by the code-
word c closest to w ( t , C).
The complexity offinding the codeword of a code
C with the largest peak to average power ratio at
each time is at most twice as much as the decoding
cornplexzty of C . I f C is symmetric the complexity
of findeng the codeword of a code C with the largest
peak to average power ratio at each time is at most
as much as the decodeng complexity of C.
Proof: We refer the reader to [3]. 0
It follows from the above that if the signal constella-
tion points have equal energy and if the code C supports
a soft decision decoding algorithm, then the value g ( t , C )
can be easily computed. Linear block and convolutional
codes, and more generally trellis codes all have well de-
fined trellises, and computation of the closest and far-
thest codewords from w ( t , C) can be accomplished using
a straightforward application of the Viterbi algorithm.
B Computation of Peak to Average
Power Ratio
If the function PAPR(C(&, $ 1 , . . . ,$ N - I ) , C ) can be
c o m p u t e d accurately for any 90,91,. . ., G N - ~ then
, we
can apply standard minimization techniques to compute
the values 40,$ 1 , . . . ,$ ~ - 1 , that minimize the peak to
power average of C($O,41,. . . ,~ N - I ) .To this end, we
recall that
= 2 omax
PAPR(C($O,$~,...,~N--~),C) g(t,C).
j t g
The following lemma will be very useful in computing
PAPR(C($o,$ 1 , . . . ,$N-I), C)-
 L e m m a IV.1 For any (, the function g ( t , () is contin-
uous on t E [0,I]. 40= 0.00 41 = 0.75 42 = 0.75 43 = 0.50
44 = 0.25 45 = 0.25 46 = 0.50 4 7 = 0.50
4 8 = 0.00 4 9 = 0.75
410 = 0.75 411 = 0.25
Proof: The proof is given in [3]. 0 412 = 0.50 413 = 0.50414 = 0.75 4 1 5 = 0.00
We conclude from the above lemma that by evalu- 416 = 0.50 417 = 0.00418 = 0.75 419 = 0.25
ating g ( t , C ) at sufficiently many uniformly spaced sam- 420 0.50 421 0.25 4522 = 0.25 4 2 3 = 0.50
ples, PAPR(C(40,41,.. . ,~ N - I )()~ can be computed to 4 2 4 = 0.50 4 2 5 = 0.50 426 = 0.75 4 2 7 = 0.75
any degree of accuracy. For each sample point the de- 4 2 8 = 0.50 4 2 9 = 0.25 $30 = 0.00 4 3 1 = 0.00
coder of C must be used once to compute g ( t , () and the 4 3 2 = 0.00 4 3 3 = 0.00 4 3 4 = 0.75 4 3 5 = 0.00
number of these uniformly spaced samples depends on 4 3 6 = 0.75 437 = 0.25 4 3 8 = 0.50 439 = 0.75
( which is very large in practice. For instance, for the 4 4 0 = 0.25 4 4 1 = 0.75 4 4 2 = 0.50 4 4 3 = 0.25
carrier frequency of 2 GHZ, 1MHZ available bandwidth 4 4 4 = 0.00 4 4 5 = 0.00 4 4 6 = 0.75 4 4 7 = 0.25
and 512 tones, ( is of the order of l o 6 and small changes
in t (say of the order causes 2x(t to change sig- Table 1: Phase Shifts of QPSK type for the rate
nificantly. For most practical systems the complexity of 1/2 BPSK convolutional code. Each number must
the computation of P A P R ( C ( ~ ~ , ~ ~ , . . . us- ,~N-~)be, multiplied
C) by 360 t o give the phase shift in de-
ing just the above uniform sampling is too great. grees.
The application of any minimization method for com-
puting the minimizing values of 40,41,. . . , ~ N - I re-
quires that PAPR(C(&,# l 1 . . . , ~N-I),() be computed
for many different values of 4 o 1 41, . . , div-1 and this In this section, we apply the algorithm described in
can be infeasible if the number of samples is too large. the previous section to various codes adapted for use
This leads us to consider alternative methods for in the physical layer of future wireless local area net-
computing PAPR(C(40,$ 1 , . . . , ~ N - I ) , e).A fruitful works by the ETSI BRAN Hiperlan-II standardization
approach is to study the change in the value of g ( t , () committee. The method we use for finding t,he mini-
<
for any fixed t as changes [3]. mizing phases for the function G,-,(C1) is the gradient
Our result in [3] is summarized in the following the- method. Once the phase shifts were computed, they
orem. were rounded to QPSK, 8-PSK and 16-PSK phase shifts.
The peak to average power ratio was then recomputed
T h e o r e m IV.2 Let a code C and phase shifts for the rounded phase shifts.
40,. . . , ~ N - I be given. Suppose that the interval [O, 13 The 5 GHZ OFDM system of ETSI BRAN Hiperlan-
is divided into L equal subintervals given by points t o = 11 standardization committee has 48 subcarriers, with
0 , tl = 1 / L ,t 2 = 2 / L ,
G . ., t L = 1. Let coding rates of 112 and 314. There are 48 subcarri-
ers with OFDM symbol duration of 3 microseconds and
600 nanoseconds guard interval. The subcarrier spac-
ing is 416.666 kHz. The BPSK, QPSK and QAM signal
constellations can be employed corresponding to respec-
Suppose that ( 3 4 N Z . Let 51 = 4N2 and
L = 16N3. Then the estimation error in replacing tively 8, 16 and 32 Mbps for the rate half code. Inter-
leaving is also employed t,o break the possible bursty
PAPR(C(40,..., ~ N - I ) , C ) with G,-,((1) is less than
dB, for N 2 32. nature of errors. To avoid difficulties in A/D and D/A
NT converter offsets and carrier feed-through in the RF sys-
tem, the subcarrier falling a t DC is not used [a]. The
Proof: The proof is given in [3]. 0 coder is the standard rate 112 convolutional code [4].
In view of the above results, for large N the com- For more details see [a].
plexity of computing G L ( ( ~ )is at most 8N3 times the For the BPSK case, we have computed the following
complexity of soft decoding of C. For small N, we could phase shifts. In each case the numbers must be mul-
increase both (1 and L to increase the accuracy of re- tiplied by 360 degrees to give the corresponding phase
placing P A P R ( C ( ~ O , . . . , ~ Nwith e)
- ~ )G,~ ( c 1 ) . shift in degrees. The first set of shifts are shifts of QPSK
We can now use any applicable minimization method type and are given in Table V. The reduction in PAPR
to find the minimizing values of 40,...,4~-1 for is 4.09 dB.
G,-,((l). Once the answer is computed, we know for By allowing shifLs of 8-PSK and 16-PSK type, the
these values of 40,. . . , 4 ~ - 1the peak to average power reduction in PAPR increases respectively to 4.22 dB and
ratio of the phase shifted code is within dB of the 4.46 dB. The phase shifts of 8-PSK type are given in
NZ Table V.
computed value (for large N)or even less for small N.
We note that the Gradient method only converges
to a local minima. In this light, there may be other
RESULTS
V. SIMULATION

683
 $0 = 0.000 41 = 0.625 42 = 0.625 43 = 0.500
$4 = 0.250 45 = 0.250 46 = 0.375 47 = 0.625
48 = 0.000 4 9 = 0.875 410= 0.875 411 = 0.375
#12 = 0.625 413 = 0.625 414 = 0.625 415 = 0.875
416 = 0.375 417 = 0.875 41s = 0.750 419 = 0.125
420 = 0.500 421 = 0.250 422 = 0.250 4 2 3 = 0.375
424 = 0.500 425 = 0.500 426 = 0.625 427 = 0.750
42s = 0.375 4 2 9 = 0.250 430 = 0.125 431 = 0.000
432 = 0.125 433 = 0.000 434 = 0.750 435 = 0.875
436 = 0.875 437 0.250 4313 = 0.625 439 = 0.750
440 = 0.250 $641 = 0.750 4 4 2 = 0.375 443 = 0.125
444 = 0.875 445 = 0.875 446 = 0.750 447 = 0.250

Table 2: Phase Shifts of 8-PSK type for the rate

l / 2 BPSK convolutional code. Each number must
be multiplied by 360 to give the phase shift in de-
grees.

/Channel
I I
IDFT b e - M u G

Figure 1: OFDM Block Diagram.

Figure 2: The Phase Shifted OFDM Block Diagram.
phase shift values that give a greater reduction in peak
to average power ratio for the above code. The use
of more powerful minimization methods instead of the
gradient method may yield even better results.

REFERENCES
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R.J. Kopmeiners and R. van Nee, “Multirate OFDM Pro-
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EP BRAN 9, June 1998.
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Average Power Ratio in Multicarrier Communications,”
IEEE Trans. Comm., submitted.
A.J. Viterbi, J. K. Wolf, E. Zehavi, R. Padovani,
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