A High Peak-to-Average Power Ratio Reduction in OFDM Systems by Ideal
N/2-shift Aperiodic Auto-Correlation Property
Pavol Svac and Ondrej Hrdlicka
Mobile Communication Systems, RA 8
Siemens Program and System Engineering, s.r.o.
Dubravska cesta 4, 845 34 Bratislava, Slovakia
{Pavol.Svac, Ondrej.Hrdlicka}@siemens.com
Abstract
This paper presents a new method for Peak-to-Average
Power Ratio (PAPR) reduction in Orthogonal Frequency
Division Multiplex (OFDM) BPSK systems based on the
auto-correlation property of the data symbol sequence.
Herein it is demonstrated that a significant PAPR re-
duction of 6 dB, independent of the number of sub-
carriers, can be achieved by assuring the appropriate
auto-correlation property of transmitted data symbol se-
quences. Since the approach relies on redundant symbols,
meeting the condition of a rate R = 0.75 complemen-
tary parity code, some degree of error correction is also
achieved.
1. Introduction
One of the promising technologies for mobile commu-
nications systems beyond 3G (B3G) is multi-carrier mo-
dulation based on the OFDM.
The basic idea of OFDM is to divide the transmitted
bit stream into many different sub-streams and send these
over many different sub-channels (sub-carriers). Such an
approach allows high data rates in multipath mobile chan-
nels. OFDM can be considered as a technique that trans-
mits data in parallel on a number of equally spaced sinu-
soidal waveforms which means that the data to be trans-
mitted determine the relative phases of the sinusoids. This
priciple has some drawbacks. Apart from high sensitivity
to frequency and time offsets, the superposition of a high
number of modulated sub-channel sinusoidal signals may
also result in a high instantaneous signal peak with respect
to the average signal level. Such behavior requires high
linearity of the power amplifiers across the entire signal
range. In order to quantify the envelope power variations,
we make use of the PAPR metric.
There are a wide range of solutions developed to com-
bat the problem of high PAPR. A good survey of these
methods is given in [1]. In this paper we focus on one
of the possible solutions: coding. This solution aims to
avoid the transmission of symbols that exhibit high PAPR
through appropriate coding. Since coding introduces re-
dundancy and thus decreases effective bit rate, it is a mat-
ter of needs and priorities whether to prefer either low
PAPR reduction which introduces slight redundancy or
high PAPR reduction at a lower code rate (i.e. lower spec-
tral efficiency). In most cases, it is desirable to find a bal-
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ance between these two parameters.
An example of a coding-based technique is presented
in [2]. The authors show that through proper coding (one
redundant bit out of four) they can avoid data sequences
which exhibit high PAPR, resulting in a 3.54 dB PAPR
gain. Unfortunately, in instances with greater than 4 sub-
carriers, they are unable to guarantee the same PAPR gain
using simple coding but were forced to perform an ex-
haustive search to find the best sequences and make use
of look-up tables thereafter. Later, several further con-
cepts based on coding, e.g. [3, 4, 5], were developed with
the objective of mitigating PAPR in OFDM or other re-
lated multi-carrier systems. However, most of them suffer
from being either highly complex, making them impracti-
cal for real applications, or they are not suitable to accom-
modate a high number of sub-channels from the PAPR re-
duction point of view. A new method called complement
block coding has been proposed in [6]. It utilizes sim-
ple inversions of particular bits on predefined positions.
The authors claim to have obtained PAPR reduction of at
most 3.5 dB while maintaining a constant code rate. The
advantageous simplicity of the encoding operation does
not, however, guarantee PAPR gain for any number of
sub-carriers. Moreover, error correction capabilities of the
code are limited to correcting only those bits that had been
complemented.
In the rest, we propose a method guaranteeing high
PAPR reduction. The usefulness of this method is en-
hanced by the fact that the number of sub-carriers is freely
selectable and low complexity implementation is possible.
The coding used relies on some parity relations which en-
able better performance compared to the common OFDM.
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 analy-
ses the problem of PAPR in connection with the auto-
correlation property of the data symbol sequence followed
by the derivation of the coding rules. Section 3 presents
simulation results used for the validation of theoretical
derivations given in Section 2. Section 4 concludes the
proposed method and the paper.
2. PAPR reduction by ideal AAC property
Firstly we introduce some notation conventions used
throughout this paper.
Let us define by ā a complex-valued vector of length
N = 2n ; n ∈ N, i.e.:
ā = (a0 , a1 , . . . , aN −1 ). (1)
44
Then the aperiodic auto-correlation (AAC) function of ā average power is equal to N . Therefore, the PAPR ac-
for the integer shifts τ is defined by: cording to (4) is 10 log N [dB]. Variation of the envelope
power and thus resulting PAPR directly depends on the
L−1−τ second term of (7), i.e. the sidelobes of AAC of the data
 

 āi ā∗i+τ 0≤τ <N sequence to be transmitted. If we consider fixed AAC in



 i=0 (7), the instantaneous
 power envelope depends only on
A(ā; τ ) = L−1+τ
 (2) cos  2π
T τ t  . It can be shown that for the shift τ = N2 ,

 āi−τ ā∗i −N < τ < 0, 2π
cos T τ t returns the highest values. Thus, the AAC for

  


 i=0 this shift, A ā; N2 , contributes the most to the power en-
0 |τ | ≥ N.  
velope. Therefore, we aim to minimize A ā; N2 (rather
where a∗i denotes the complex conjugate of ai . set to zero) by stating explicit conditions on the symbols.
We represent the m-th transmitted baseband OFDM It is plausible that the worst case in the common system
symbol as the sum of the contributions of all sub-carriers, is represented by the all-ones data sequence (ai = +1)
i.e. the real part of the following complex signal: as all sub-carrier sinusoids add up constructively. Another
apparent point is that the maximum power should occur at
N
 −1
k time t = 0 , when all the auto-correlation values add up
sm (t) = am
k e
j2π T t
(3) most constructively. Although this is not true for all pos-
k=0 sible data sequences ā, (since AAC can also be negative)
for t ∈ 0, T ), wherein T stands for the whole symbol it is sufficient to consider t = 0, and the worst case oc-
duration. curring when all symbols ai = +1. This is due to the fact
The most common way of defining the instantaneous that if the maximum power peak occurs at another time, it
power of a signal, say r(t), in signal and communications clearly cannot be greater than in this case. Let us evaluate
2 AAC now:
theory is |r(t)| . The general definition of the main pa-
rameter known as PAPR which expresses the fluctuations A (ā; 0) = a20 + a21 + · · · + a2N −1 = N,
of the envelope power is:
A (ā; 1) = a0 a1 + a1 a2 + · · · + aN −2 aN −1 ,
2
max |s(t)| .. ..
PAPR =  . (4)
1 T 2
. .
T 0 |s(t)| dt N
A ā; = a0 a N + a1 a N +1 + . . . (8)
Further, we define the instantaneous envelope power of 2 2 2

the signal s(t) as follows: +a N −2 a N + N −2 + a N −1 a N + N −1 ,

2 2 2 2 2 2

m m 2 m m ∗ .. ..
P [s (t)] = |s (t)| = s (t) s (t) . (5) . .
Substituting (3) into (5) and putting τ = k − i allows for A (ā; N − 1) = a0 aN −1 .
 
expressing the signal power by AAC, i.e.: Further, we put A ā; N2 = 0 by setting:
N
 −1 N
 −1
k ∗ i a0 a N + a1 a N +1 = 0
P [sm (t)] = am
k e
j2π T t
(am
i ) e
−j2π T t 2 2

k=0 i=0 a2 a N +2 + a3 a N +3 = 0
 ∗ j 2π
2 2

= am
k (am
i ) e
T (k−i)t (6) .. ..
. . (9)
k,i
N −1  a N −2 a N + N −2 + a N −1 a N + N −1 = 0,
 2 2 2 2 2 2
m m −j 2π
T τt
= A (ā ; 0) + 2Re A (ā ; τ ) e . from which we get the following formulae:
τ =1
a0 = −a1 a N a N +1 ,
Let us assume a data sequence ām of the m-th OFDM 2 2

symbol with entries consisting of BPSK symbols, ai ∈ a2 = −a3 a N +2 a N +3 ,

2 2
{±1} , with bit mapping defined by the following rule: .. ..
1 → +1 and 0 → −1. According to (6), we obtain the . . (10)
instantaneous envelope power as follows: a N −2 = −a N −1 a N + N −2 a N + N −1 .
2 2 2 2 2 2
N −1
  N
 2π Note that the condition of A ā; 2 = 0 means that AAC
m m
P [s (t)] = N + 2 A (ā ; τ ) cos − τ t
T sampled at τ = − N2 , 0, N2 gives δ function defined by:
τ =1
N −1
 
 2π N τ = 0,
m
=N +2 A (ā ; τ ) cos τt . δ(τ ) = (11)
τ =1
T 0 τ = 0,
(7)
or in other words ideal AAC function.
It is known that for the BPSK modulated OFDM sym- Let us evaluate the PAPR of the proposed system.
bol of length N maximum power peak equals N 2 and the Each of the conditions in (10) ties up 4 symbols, one

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of which is redundant. Therefore, the worst case sce- 0.8

nario in the proposed system leads to N4 negative symbols 0.7

a0 , a2 , . . . , a N −2 . Hence, if we substituted the conditions
2
2 0.6
of (10) into (8), we would have obtained N4 · 3N
4 = 16
3N

negative sign terms. The total number of terms in the con- 0.5

Power [W]
sidered equations (excluding zero-shift equation) is sim-
0.4
ply the sum of an arithmetic sequence
0.3
N
 −1
N (N − 1)
n= . (12) 0.2

n=1
2
0.1

N (N −1)
Therefore, the number of positive terms is − 2
0
0 20 40 60 80 100
3N 2 5N 2 −8N m
16 = 16 . The result of the sum in (7) for the
worst case can be calculated by the difference between Figure 1: Power envelope of common OFDM system for
the number of positive and negative signs in the conside- m = 100 randomly generated frames
2 2
N 2 −4N
red equations, i.e. 5N 16
−8N
− 3N16 = 8 . Thus, the
power peak is: 0.8

N − 4N N2
0.7

Ppeak = N + 2 = , (13)
8 4 0.6

0.5
and PAPR representing the worst case:
Power [W]

2
0.4
N
4 N
PAPR = 10log10 = 10log10 . (14) 0.3
N 4
0.2

If we do not apply conditions (10), PAPR is 0.1

10log10 (N ). Consequently, the amount of PAPR reduc-
tion is always: 0
0 20 40 60 80 100
m

N .
10log10 (N ) − 10log10 = 10log10 (4) = 6.02 dB,
4 m = 100 randomly generated frames
independent of the number of sub-carriers, N .
One can easily check that the conditions of (10), ge-
nerally ai = −aj ak al , where i stands for the index of
the redundant symbol and j,k,l denote the indices of the
belonging information symbols, represent complementary
parity code at the bit level. This fact can be expressed as:
bi = bj ⊕ bk ⊕ bl ⊕ 1,
with the bits being indexed correspondingly and ⊕ denot-
ing the operation sum modulo 2 (XOR). The term parity
expresses the parity encoding operation while the term
complementary is used to express negation of the result.
Apart from significant PAPR reduction, redundant pa-
rity bits can also be used for error correction. If we ap-
ply soft decoding, it is possible to correct, to some extent,
all the symbols involved in equations of (10) (i.e. bits in-
volved in corresponding parity relations). Since each sym-
bol ai is included in equations, we can correct each of the
N bits carried in the OFDM frame.
3. Simulation Results
In the previous section we proved that the amount of
PAPR reduction does not change with the number of sub-
carriers. It was also derived that the amount of PAPR
reduction is 6.02 dB. Fig.1 shows the power envelope of
Figure 2: Power envelope of proposed OFDM system for
standard OFDM system with 16 sub-carriers for m = 100
random frames.
It can be observed that the envelope varies considerably,
exhibiting several high peaks. Fig. 2 shows the power
envelope of the proposed system for the same parameters.
It is obvious that the power envelope variation is much less
(15) and that the peaks are eliminated.
Theoretical bound on PAPR reduction has been vali-
dated against simulations for number of sub-carriers N =
16, N = 32 and N = 512. For Fast Fourier Trans-
form (FFT) sizes N = 16 and N = 32, all possible
input sequences were generated. With 14 redundant bits,
this means 212 and 224 sequences being generated, respec-
tively. In the former case, the common system’s worst case
PAPR is 12.04 dB. In the proposed system, a reduction of
6.02 dB is expected, resulting in PAPR of 6.02 dB. This
value was also obtained by the simulations. In the latter
case, PAPR is expected to be reduced from 15.05 to 9.03
dB. To illustrate, simulation results are presented in the
form of Complementary Cumulative Distribution Func-
tion (CCDF) in Fig. 3. One can observe that the theo-
retical PAPR boundary has been justified.
Since it is practically impossible to generate all possi-
ble input sequences for FFT size 512, we used a statistical
approach and generated 107 random sequences. The re-

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 0 -1
10 10
Reference system
Proposed system

-2
10
Pr(PAPR>PAPR0)

BER
-1 -3
10 10

-4
10

-2 -5
10 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
PAPR0 [dB] Eb/N0 [dB]

Figure 3: CCDF of PAPR for FFT size N = 32 Figure 5: Comparison of the performance between the re-
ference and proposed OFDM BPSK system
100

10-1 bandwidth. Despite the fact that BPSK modulation does

10
-2 not provide high data rates, there are applications that do
not require very high data rates, but the most crucial point
Pr(PAPR>PAPR0)

-3
10
10-4
10-5
10
-6
10-7
10-8
4 6 8 10
PAPR0 [dB]
Figure 4: CCDF of PAPR for FFT size N = 512
sults are shown in Fig. 4 in the form of CCDF again. For
the common system, PAPR for the worst case is 27.09 dB.
As can be seen from Fig. 4, theoretical PAPR reduction
bound of 6.02 dB was not exceeded or achieved for 107
random sequences.
The secondary benefit of the coding procedure targeted
at PAPR reduction is demonstrated by improved system
performance. Fig. 5 plots the performance of the pro-
posed system in terms of BER. It shows that by exploiting
redundancy for error correction, better performance than
the reference OFDM BPSK system can be achieved.
4. Conclusion
This paper shows that PAPR reduction of 6 dB in
OFDM BPSK systems can be obtained by ensuring ideal
N [4] J. A Davis and J. Jedwab, “Peak-To-Mean Power Control
2 -shift AAC property. This is a very substantial PAPR
reduction when compared with other techniques which,
on average, gain about 3 to 4 dB. Furthermore, PAPR
gain is constant with respect to the number of sub-carriers,
i.e. there is no restriction on FFT size. This makes the
proposal very attractive mainly for systems using a large
number of sub-carriers. From an implementation point
of view, simple complementary parity encoders need to
be employed, which permits for a low-complexity solu-
tion. Moreover, the redundancy of the code enables simple
error control. On the other hand, it increases the required
is to ensure low PAPR, e.g. uplink data transmissions.
The combination of the above mentioned features make
the proposal interesting for such applications.
The principle of the proposal can be also generalized for
higher order modulations, e.g. QAM. However, for higher
order modulation, the N2 -shift of the AAC cannot genera-
lly be set to zero if all the symbols are to be drawn from the
12 14 16
same modulation alphabet. Consequently, optimal rules
that minimize N2 -shift of AAC need to be derived depend-
ing on the given modulation. It is expected that the PAPR
reduction would be less than for BPSK modulation, which
enables ideal N2 -shift auto-correlation.
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