A PAR Reduction Technique for LDPC-Coded

SFBC-OFDM Systems
Mi Hyun Lee*, Yun Hee Kim**, Jae Young Ahn**, and Yong Soo Cho*
*School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chung-Ang University, 156-756, KOREA
Tel: 82-02-820-5299, E-mail: yscho@cau.ac.kr
**Electronic and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), 305-350, KOREA
E-mail: yheekim@etri.re.kr, jyahn@etri.re.kr

Abstract
In this paper, a peak-to-average power ratio (PAR)
reduction technique for a space-frequency block-coded
OFDM (SFBC-OFDM) system is proposed by utilizing the
inherent characteristic of assigning data onto SFBC-OFDM
subcarriers and employing the DFT spreading technique
accordingly. Also, an appropriate log likelihood ratio
(LLR) computation for low-density parity-check (LDPC)
decoding is described for the case where the LDPC code is
used as a forward error correction code with the proposed
SFBC-OFDM for PAR reduction.

I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing
(OFDM) system with transmit diversity has received a
great deal of attention since it can improve the efficiency
and performance of the OFDM system significantly without
increasing hardware complexity at mobile terminals. If
both spatial diversity and frequency diversity are available,
one of the most promising transmit diversity techniques for
OFDM systems is the space-frequency block-coded OFDM
(SFBC-OFDM) where a space-time code is employed
across OFDM subcarriers. Compared with the space-time
block-coded OFDM (STBC-OFDM), the SFBC-OFDM is
better suited for OFDM systems with a large number of
subcarriers, requiring high-speed or wide coverage [1][2].
However, the SFBC-OFDM system with a large number of
subcarriers has a disadvantage of a large peak-to-average
power ratio (PAR). Different types of PAR reduction
techniques such as partial transmit sequence (PTS),
selective mapping (SLM), clipping, decision aided
reconstruction (DAR) have been investigated in the
literatures. However, these techniques have the
disadvantage of introducing either additional overhead
(computational complexity, side information) or
performance degradation (in-band distortion, increase of
out-of-band radiation, peak regrowth after filtering). In
recent years, the DFT spreading technique, which can
greatly reduce the PAR of OFDM system with a small
computational overhead, was proposed by using the
columns of a Fourier matrix as a spreading code [3]. In this

paper, a new structure of an SFBC-OFDM for PAR

reduction is proposed by utilizing the inherent
characteristic of assigning data onto SFBC-OFDM
subcarriers and employing the DFT spreading technique
accordingly.
On the other hand, the low-density parity-check (LDPC)
code has recently re-emerged as an attractive alternative to
turbo code due to its capability of approaching Shannons
performance limits [4]-[6]. It also has the advantages of
decoder complexity lower than turbo code, error detection
capability, no requirement of interleaving, parallel
implementation of decoder, and no error floor [4][6]. It was
reported that LDPC based space-time coded OFDM
systems are capable of efficiently exploiting the achievable
spatial diversity in wireless channels. In this paper, an
appropriate log likelihood ratio (LLR) computation for
LDPC decoding is described for the case where the LDPC
code is used as a forward error correction code with the
proposed SFBC-OFDM for PAR reduction. Finally,
performances of the proposed PAR reduction technique for
SFBC-OFDM systems are verified under ITU-R channel
environment via computer simulation.

II. AN LDPC-CODED SFBC-OFDM SYSTEM WITH

SPREADING
A. An SFBC-OFDM System with Spreading
In a typical SFBC-OFDM system where no spreading
code is used, a space-time code is employed across OFDM
subcarriers as follows:
X1 = [ A(0) A* (1) L A( N 2) A* ( N 1)]T
X 2 = [ A(1) A* (0) L A( N 1)

A* ( N 2)]T

(1)

where A(k ) and Xi represent the k-th symbol and a signal

vector transmitted from the i-th antenna, respectively. The
signal vector consisting of N components in (1) can be
divided into to two signal vectors, i.e., A o consisting of

N/2 odd components and A e consisting of N/2 even

components as follows [2]:
A e = [ A(0) A( 2) L A( 2k ) L A( N 2)]T
A o = [ A(1) A(3) L A(2k + 1) L A( N 1) T

Then, (1) can be rewritten by using (2) as

(2)

X1,e = A e , X1,o = A *o

X 1 (k )

X 2,e = A o , X 2,o = A *e

S o*

where X i,o and X i,e denote the signal vectors composed of

Ae

even and odd components of X i , respectively.

Using the above notations, the transmitted signal from
each transmit antenna can be written as
N 1

xi ( n ) =

X ( k )e

i ,e ( k ) e

and

i ,o ( k )e

X i ,e (k )

denote symbols

the i-th antenna, respectively. The first term and second

term in (4) represent the IFFT operation of even
components and odd components of the signal vector,
respectively. From the above equations, one can see that
the selected sets of X i,o and X i,e are placed on equidistant
subcarriers over the entire bandwidth and mutually
orthogonal. Note that, if the columns of Fourier matrix are
used as spreading codes and the spread symbols are
mapped onto equidistant subcarriers, the transmitted signal
of this OFDM system has the same PAR as the modulation
scheme employed for single carrier transmission systems
[3]. Here, we propose a PAR reduction technique for
SFBC-OFDM systems by dividing the entire subcarriers
into even and odd subcarriers, as described above, and
applying the DFT spreading technique to each subset where
subcarriers are placed on equidistance.
As shown in Fig. 1, S o and S e represent the spread
signals of A o and A e by Fourier matrix as follows:
N / 21

S e (k ) =

A (m)e

j 2mk /( N / 2 )

j 2mk /( N / 2 )

m =0
N / 21

S o (k ) =

o ( m )e

(5)

m =0

S e = [ S e (0) S e (1) L S e ( N / 2 1)]T

S o = [ S o (0) S o (1) L S o ( N / 2 1)]T

The spread signals are encoded by the method described

above, and modulated by the IFFT. Then, the transmitted
signal from each antenna can be written as
j 2n N 2 1
j 4nk
N
S o* (k )e N
k =0
k =0
k =0
N 1 j 4k ( n + m )
N 1
N 1 j 4k ( n m )
N 1
j
n

2
2
2
2
2
N
N
=
Ae (m)
e
e N
Ao* (m)
e
m =0
k =0
m =0
k =0
= Ae (n mod ( N / 2)) e j 2n / N Ao* (n mod ( N / 2))
N 1
x 2 (n) =
X 2 (k )e j 2nk / N
k =0
= Ao (n mod ( N / 2)) + e j 2n / N Ae* ( n mod ( N / 2))
N 1

X 1 ( k )e

j 2nk
N

N 1
2

S e (k )e

j 4nk
N

N 1
2

e
k =0

So

j 4k ( n m ) / N

Fig. 1. A transmitter for an LDPC-Coded SFBC-OFDM

system with spreading

first antenna consists of a periodic repetition of even

components and a periodic repetition of the complex
conjugate version of odd components multiplied by a
phase-rotation signal. The transmitted signal from the
second antenna is similarly defined. Therefore, the PAR of
each transmitted signal for the proposed SFBC-OFDM
with spreading is significantly reduced to the level of a
single carrier system plus 3 dB.
B. An LDPC-Coded SFBC-OFDM System with Spreading
An LDPC code is a linear block code specified by a
sparse parity check matrix containing mostly 0s and only a
relatively small number of 1s. The LDPC code are
classified into two groups, regular LDPC code and
irregular LDPC code, depending on the regularity of the
number of ones in every column. Here, we define the code
specified by the N b M b dimensional parity check matrix
as ( N b , M b )

LDPC code, where

R = Kb / Nb

Ye ( k ) = H1,e (k ) S e ( k ) + H 2,e ( k ) S o ( k ) + We ( k )

N
( n m ) is used.
2

From (6), one can see that the transmitted signal from the

and

K b = N b M b denote the code rate and uncodedinformation block length, respectively [4]-[6].
As shown in Fig. 1, the information bits at the
transmitter are encoded by an LDPC encoder with a source
block length of K b and a codeword length of N b , and then
mapped to complex symbols such as MPSK or MQAM.
After passing through the spreading block (inserted for
PAR reduction), the signal is encoded by the proposed
SFBC-OFDM block, and then transmitted from the
corresponding antenna. In this paper, the channel is
assumed frequency-selective with each tap experiencing
Rayleigh fading.
At the receiver side, the received signal is demodulated by
FFT as

(6)

In (6), the formula,

Se*

(4)

transmitted on the k-th subcarrier of X i , X i ,e , and X i,o at

x2 ( n )

So

j 2n ( 2 k +1) / N

k =0

where X i (k ), X i , o (k ),

x1 ( n) =

h2

Ao

N / 2 1

k =0

Se

X 2 (k )

j 4nk / N

x1 (n)

Se

j 2nk / N

k =0

N / 2 1

h1

(3)

(7)

Yo ( k ) = H1,o ( k ) S o* (k ) + H 2,o ( k ) S e* (k ) + Wo (k )

where

H i , e ( k ) and H i , o ( k )

represent

H i ( 2m )

and

H i (2m + 1) , respectively. Assuming that the channel

coefficients
between
adjacent
subcarriers
are
approximately identical, i.e., H i ,e (k ) H i ,o (k ) = H i (k ) ,
two combined signals at the SFBC decoder is given by
[1][2].

R e ( k ) = H 1*,e ( k )Ye ( k ) + H 2 ,o ( k )Y o* ( k )

~
A e ( m) =

= H 1 (k ) + H 2 (k ) S e (k )

(8)

+ H 1* ( k )W e ( k ) + H 2 ( k )W o* ( k )
2
2

= H 1 (k ) + H 2 (k ) S o (k )

+ H 2* ( k )W e ( k ) H 1 ( k )W o* ( k )

The belief propagation algorithm or sum-product

algorithm has been widely adopted for decoding LDPC
codes. For the message-passing decoder, a log-likelihood
ratio (LLR) of each bit needs to be computed. Let b j (k )
be the j-th bit of the transmitted symbol at the k-th
subcarrier. For an uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel,
the initial message passed from bit node to check node in
log domain is given by

2
2 M 1
i ,b =1

R (k ) X j H (k )
exp
2

i
=
1

LLR (b j ( k )) = log M 1
2
2
i ,b j = 0

R
k
X
H
k
(
)
(
)

exp
2

i =1

e (k )e

j 2mk /( N / 2 )

(11)

k =0
N / 21

~
S o ( k )e j 2mk /( N / 2 )

k =0

~
~
where A o (m) and A e (m) represent the despread signals

R o ( k ) = H 2*,o ( k )Ye ( k ) H 1,e ( k )Y o* ( k )

~
A o ( m) =

N / 21

(9)

of odd and even components, respectively. Since the effect

of frequency-selective fading is compensated by FEQ in
the proposed approach, the LLR computation for LDPC
decoder in the SFBC-OFDM system with spreading must
be made under the assumption of AWGN channel and flat
fading as follows:
~
P ( a (k ) = 0 | A( k ))
~
P( a (k ) = 1 | A( k ))
~
(A
( k ) 1) 2
exp

2~ 2

= log
~
( A( k ) + 1) 2
exp
2~ 2

q o ( k ) = log

where ~ 2 = 2 N / 2 1

k =0

~
= 2 A
(k )
2
~

H 2 (k ) + H1 (k )

2
H1 (k ) + H 2 (k ) +

(12)

.
2

where R(k ) is the received symbol at the k-th subcarrier,

i,b j = b

is the transmit symbol among 2 M 1 possible

choices, under the condition of b j ( k ) = b( {0,1}) . A

priori probability of b j (k ) is initially set to be 1/2
assuming random source generation. Then, the linear
combining of received signals on adjacent subcarriers,
given by (8), does not recover the transmitted signal A(k )
multiplied by channel, but produces its spread version.
Thus, the LLR computation has to be made after the signal
is despread in the LDPC-coded SFBC-OFDM system with
spreading. That is, the frequency domain equalization
(FEQ) has to be performed before dispreading.
As shown in Fig. 2, a joint operation of SFBC decoding
and equalization can be performed by [7].
2

~
S e (k ) =

H1 ( k ) + H 2 (k )
2

H1 (k ) + H 2 ( k ) + 2
+
2

~
S o (k ) =

H1 (k ) + H 2 ( k )
2

S e (k )

H 1* (k )W ( k ) e + H 2 (k )Wo* (k )
2

H 1 ( k ) + H 2 (k ) + 2

(10)

H1 (k ) + H 2 ( k ) + 2
+

S o (k )

H 2* (k )W ( k ) e + H 1 (k )Wo* (k )
2

H 1 ( k ) + H 2 (k ) + 2

Here, two different criteria, zero-forcing criterion and

MMSE criterion, can be applied to the estimation of FEQ
coefficients. As usual, better performance can be obtained
by applying MMSE or 2-D MMSE criterion to the FEQ
estimation at the expense of computational complexity.
Then, despread signals are obtained by

III. SIMULATION
In this section, the proposed SFBC-OFDM with
spreading is compared with the conventional SFBC-OFDM
in term of PAR and BER under the ITU-R frequencyselective channel with each tap experiencing Rayleigh
fading. The carrier frequency and speed are chosen as
2GHz and 30km/hr, respectively. The performances are
evaluated for an OFDM system with an FFT size of 2048, a
CP length of 452, and a symbol duration of 100us. A
binary irregular LDPC code of (4096, 1432) is used with
the maximum number of iterations (50).
In Fig. 3, PARs of the proposed SFBC-OFDM with
DFT spreading (S) are compared to the SFBC-OFDM
without spreading (NS). From this figure, one can see that
the PAR of the SFBC-OFDM (NS) is about 12 dB at the
probability of 1e-4, regardless of input constellation. One
can also see that the PARs of the proposed SFBC-OFDM
(S) are 3dB, 6dB, and 7dB when input constellation used
are QPSK, 16QAM, and 64QAM, respectively, resulting in
5~9dB PAR reduction gain. When the virtual carriers are
used as a guard band, this reduction gain can be reduced
due to the violation of the condition on equidistant
subcarrier allocation. The actual gain of PAR reduction in
the proposed SFBC-OFDM (S) varies depending on the
modulation order and the size of virtual carriers.
Fig. 4 shows BER performances of the SFBC-OFDM
with spreading (S) and without spreading (NS) when the
LDPC code is either present or absent. Here, the solid line
represents the BER of the LDPC-coded SFBC-OFDM
while the dotted line represents the uncoded case. From
this figure, one can see that, in the uncoded case, the
proposed SFBC-OFDM with spreading (S) can achieve a
lower BER than the conventional one (NS) due to the

10

SFBC-OFDM (Spreading vs. Non-spreading)

10

10

10

-1

10

BER

Prob [PAR i > PAR0]

NS-QPSK
NS-16QAM
NS-64QAM
S-QPSK
S-16QAM
S-64QAM

10

-2

10

10

10

10

-3

6
PAR0 [dB]

10

10

12

Fig. 3. Comparison of PARs for SFBC-OFDM with

spreading (S) and without spreading (NS)

effects of spreading, i.e., frequency diversity gain and noise

whitening. One can also see from this figure that, in the
coded case, the LDPC-coded OFDM system without
spreading achieves a low BER with a large PAR when the
conventional LLR computation scheme is applied for
LDPC decoding. Note that the term conventional in this
figure signifies that the LLR computation for LDPC
decoding is made by (9) under the assumption of
uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel. However, the
performance of the LDPC-coded OFDM system with
spreading is degraded significantly when the
conventional LLR computation scheme is applied. On
the other hand, the proposed LDPC-coded OFDM system
with spreading can achieve a large coding gain of about 9
dB even with a significant PAR reduction.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this paper, it is shown that the proposed SFBCOFDM system with spreading can achieve a significant
gain in PAR reduction at the transmitter and a lower BER,
due to the effect of frequency diversity, at the receiver. It is
also shown that the LDPC-coded SFBC-OFDM systems
with spreading is very effective in reducing PAR and
lowering BER in frequency-selective fading channels after
the processing of frequency-domain equalization and
despreading.

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SFBC-OFDM (LDPC-Coded vs. Uncoded)

NS-LDPC (conventional)
S-LDPC (conventional)
S-LDPC (proposed)
NS-uncoded.
S-uncoded

-1

-2

-3

-4

-5

-6

10
12
EsN0 [dB]

14

16

18

20

Fig. 4. BER comparison of SFBC-OFDM system with

spreading(S) and without spreading(NS)
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[7]

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