Journal of ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 66, NO.

3, 2015, 154–158

PEAK TO AVERAGE POWER RATIO

REDUCTION IN NC–OFDM SYSTEMS
∗ ∗∗ ∗
Saadia Tabassum — Sajjad Hussain — Abdul Ghafoor

Non contiguous orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (NC-OFDM) is an efficient and adaptable multicarrier
modulation scheme to be used in cognitive radio communications. However like OFDM, NC-OFDM also suffers from the
main drawback of high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). In this paper PAPR has been reduced by employing three
different trigonometric transforms. Discrete cosine transform (DCT), discrete sine transform (DST) and fractional fourier
transform (FRFT) has been combined with conventional selected level mapping (SLM) technique to reduce the PAPR of
both OFDM and NC-OFDM based systems. The method combines all the transforms with SLM in different ways. Transforms
DCT, DST and FRFT have been applied before the SLM block or inside the SLM block before IFFT. Simulation results
show the comparative analysis of all the transforms using SLM in case of both OFDM and NC-OFDM based systems.
K e y w o r d s: peak to average power ratio, non contiguous orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, selected level
mapping, discrete cosine transform, discrete sine transform, fractional Fourier transform

1 INTRODUCTION [8]. However incase of NC-OFDM systems as some sub-

carriers are used for primary transmission and some for
To fulfill the increasing demand of bandwidth, efficient secondary transmission so any non linearity effect for
spectrum utilization is necessary. Dynamic spectrum ac- secondary users can disturb the primary users as well.
cess (DSA) provides efficient spectrum utilization by al- Due to this, PAPR is worse in NC-OFDM systems so
lowing secondary users to opportunistically use the li- PAPR reduction techniques used for OFDM need to be
censed spectrum when it is not being utilized. Cognitive modified for NC-OFDM.
radio (CR) [1] is an emerging technology for the efficient Different techniques have also been proposed to reduce
use of spectrum that enables DSA. CR also requires an the PAPR of NC-OFDM systems like joint sidelobe and
adaptable multicarrier modulation technique to be used PAPR reduction [9], adaptive mode PAPR reduction al-
at its physical layer. Non contiguous orthogonal frequency gorithm [10], PAPR reduction with trellis shaping [11]
division multiplexing (NC-OFDM) [2] can be the very and an efficient adaptive technique with low complexity
[12]. SLM is also an efficient technique to reduce PAPR
suitable modulation technique for DSA networks as it
in NC-OFDM systems [13]. It is one of the probabilistic
provides the agile use of spectrum when it is occupied by
PAPR reduction technique as the probability of occur-
both primary and secondary users. It achieves high data
rence of high PAPR is compensated by signal modifica-
rates by deactivating some sub-carriers that can interfere
tion [14]. Therefore SLM gives better PAPR reduction
with the primary sub-carriers. Besides several advantages
without any data rate loss and also without any signal
like high bandwidth efficiency, robustness against fre-
distortion. However SLM has high computational com-
quency selective fading and relatively simple receiver im- plexity as well. Incase of OFDM systems an efficient tech-
plementation NC-OFDM also suffers from a major draw- nique has been proposed that combines discrete cosine
back of high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). This transform (DCT) and SLM and provides better PAPR
high PAPR leads to in-band distortion and out of band reduction than each one can individually provide [15, 16].
radiation, requires amplifiers with wide dynamic range, This technique has not been applied in NC-OFDM sys-
increases complexity of analog-to-digital and digital-to- tems.
analog converters and reduces the efficiency of power am- In this paper we have not only applied this technique
plifiers. Therefore it is desirable to reduce the PAPR of in OFDM along with other two transforms (discrete sine
NC-OFDM systems. transform, DST and fractional fourier transform, FRFT)
Several techniques have been proposed to combat this but have also employed it in NC-OFDM systems. DCT,
problem in OFDM systems like amplitude clipping [3], DST and FRFT based SLM has been used in this paper
coding [4], partial transmit sequence [5], selected level in the form of two different ways. Scheme 1 reduces the
mapping (SLM) [6], interleaving [7] and tone reservation PAPR of the original signal by applying the transform

∗
Department of Electrical Engineering, National University of Sciences & Technology Islamabad, Pakistan, [email protected],
∗∗
[email protected] Department of Electronics Engineering, Mohammad Ali Jinnah University Islamabad, Pakistan, saj-
[email protected],

c 2015 FEI STU

DOI: 10.2478/jee-2015-0024, Print ISSN 1335-3632, On-line ISSN 1339-309X

- 10.2478/jee-2015-0024
Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/25/2016 05:22:55PM
via University of Glasgow Library
 Journal of ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 66, NO. 3, 2015 155

From dynamic spectrum sensing

Subcanier
ON/OFF Sub-carrier ON/OFF information
Transmitter
x(n) y(n)
Modulator S/P IFFT CP P/S

Sub-carrier ON/OFF information Channel

x‘(n)
Demodulator P/S Equalization FFT CP Removal S/P
y‘(n)
Receiver

Fig. 1. Secondary NC-OFDM Transceiver with PAPR Reduction

once before applying the SLM, while Scheme 2 applies the where E[·] is the expected value and s(t) denotes the
transforms inside SLM, before individual IFFT blocks. baseband NC-OFDM signal after IFFT, Xk is the sym-
Results of both schemes are shown in case of OFDM and bol of the k th sub-carrier and N denotes the total sub-
NC-OFDM systems as to give a relevant comparison. carriers. There is no complementary cumulative distribu-
tion function (CCDF) expression for the PAPR of NC-
OFDM system but [17] has given an upper bound on it
2 NC–OFDM TRANSCEIVER which is p ie the maximum value of PAPR for the MPSK
modulated NC-OFDM signal with p active sub-carriers is
A secondary NC-OFDM transceiver is shown in Fig. 1. equal to p, regardless of the total number of sub-carriers.
Its basic principle is to split a high stream serial data
into slower parallel streams to be transmitted over or-
thogonal sub-carriers. These parallel streams are then 4 SELECTED LEVEL MAPPING (SLM)
modulated using an M-ary modulator. In case of NC-
OFDM some sub-carriers are deactivated to refrain any In SLM firstly the source data are divided into sub-
secondary user to interfere with the primary user. The blocks all containing the same information and then each
sub-carrier ON/OFF information is required to avoid one is multiplied by different phase sequences. The most
this interference. This sub-carrier ON/OFF information suitable sub-block which gives the minimum PAPR is
is provided by the dynamic spectrum sensing. These mod- then selected. Block diagram of SLM is shown in Fig. 2.
ulated streams are then transformed into time domain
using inverse fast fourier transform (IFFT). Cyclic prefix
SLM B1
(CP) is then added to avoid the inter symbol interference. X1 x1
The parallel data is then again converted to serial using IFFT
parallel to serial converter. B2
At the receiver side, the data are first converted to Partition X2 x2
IFFT Select the
Data into x
parallel streams by using serial to parallel converter. CP sub-
one with
source
is removed and data are again converted to frequency do- blocks
X
. minimum
main using fast fourier transform. Distortions added to . PARP

the signal through the channel are equalized. After that,

BU .
XU xU
the data are again converted to single stream using par- IFFT
allel to serial converter. Original signal is reconstructed
using demodulator.
Fig. 2. Selected Mapping Block Diagram

3 PAPR OF NC–OFDM
Surce data X after partitioning are multiplied by
PAPR is defined as ratio between the peak power and phase vectors {B1 , B2 , . . . , Bu } to give the modified
average power, and the complex envelope of NC-OFDM sub-blocks {X1 , X2 , . . . , Xu } to be further processed by
signal are given by IFFT. Out of these modified data blocks the one that
gives the minimum PAPR is selected and transmitted.
N −1 PAPR reduction in SLM depends on number and design
max |s(t)2 | X
of phase sequences U . Greater number of phase sequences
P AP R = , s(t) = Xk ej2πkf t (1,2)
E[|s(t)2 |] gives more PAPR reduction. After applying SLM the
k=0

- 10.2478/jee-2015-0024
Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/25/2016 05:22:55PM
via University of Glasgow Library
156 S. Tabassum — S. Hussain — A. Ghafoor: PEAK TO AVERAGE POWER RATIO REDUCTION IN NC-OFDM SYSTEMS

SLM B1
X1 Transform X‘1 x1
(DCT/DST/FRFT)
IFFT

B2
Partition X2 Transform X‘2 x2 Select the x
Data into (DCT/DST/FRFT) IFFT
one with
source sub-
blocks
X
. minimum
. PARP
BU .
XU X‘U xU
Transform
IFFT
(DCT/DST/FRFT)

Fig. 3. Scheme-2 Transform applied before each IFFT block

baseband NC-OFDM signal consisting of N sub-carriers FRFT is a generalized fourier transform that computes
becomes the mixed time and frequency components of the signal.
N −1
1 X 2πkt Transformation is defined as
xu (t) = √ Ak Bu,k ej T (3)
N k=0
T α {f (x)} = Fα (u)
where x(t) is the modified data block. u = 1, 2, . . . , U
is the number of sub-block and Ak is the symbol of the where T α is the α order fractional T transform and α
k th sub-carrier, while T is the symbol duration. At the is the fractional order. Such type of transform is called
receiver side an reverse operation is performed to recover fractional transform. FRFT depends on parameter α and
the original information. is interpreted by the rotation of angle ie if α = π/2 it
Multicarrier signals can be constructed through the corresponds to conventional fourier transform and when
complex exponential functions but this is not the only α = 0 it corresponds to identity operator. FRFT en-
basis. DCT or DST both give a set of cosinusoidal or si- hances the performance of multicarrier systems by em-
nusoidal functions that can be used to implement multi- ploying orthogonal signal basis of the chirp type. In this
carrier modulation schemes such as OFDM. They linearly paper FRFT has been combined with SLM to reduce the
transform the time domain data into frequency domain PAPR of NC-OFDM systems.
by representing the data as a sum of cosines or sines.
Mathematically they can be represented as 5 PAPR REDUCTION SCHEMES
r Ns −1
2 X cos nπt PAPR has been reduced by applying the three trans-
X(t) = a n Bn ( ). (4)
N n=0 sin Ts forms DCT, DST and FRFT.
Scheme 1:
respectively. Source data are first partitioned into sub-blocks and
DCT is like discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of real then transformed by using DCT, DST and FRFT. This
and even functions that reduces peak to average power operation is inserted between Partitioning sub-blocks and
ratio by reducing autocorrelation of the input sequence. the SLM block in Fig. 2. The transformed data are then
The main advantage of DCT is that it does not require further processed as before. The applied transforms re-
any side information for the receiver. The computational duces the PAPR by decorrelating the input sequence and
complexity of DCT is also less than that of Fourier trans- thus constraining the signal energy in few coefficients.
form. Scheme 2:
DST is similar to DFT but of real functions only. It In modified SLM, data after the partitioning into
has the property of data compression that is viable for sub-blocks, are again transformed by DCT/DFT/FRFT
PAPR reduction. It decorrelates the original data and but separately ”inside” the SLM block before applying
compacts the signal energy in lesser number of transform IFFT on every sub-block {X1′ , X2′ , . . . , Xu′ } to give the
coefficients. This compaction helps to reduce the PAPR modified sub-blocks {x1 , x2 , . . . , xu } . These transforms
of original signal. decorrelates the data in a sequence by compacting large
SLM obtains better PAPR but at a cost of increased amount of signal energy into few transform coefficients so
complexity. So a better PAPR reduction is achieved by this gives a better reduction when a high PAPR signal
combining the features of both techniques. A DCT based is applied at the input. Block diagram of the proposed
SLM technique has been used in the form of two men- scheme is shown in Fig. 3. As every sub-block is trans-
tioned schemes and results have been compared in case formed after IFFT, complexity of this scheme increases to
of both OFDM and NC-OFDM systems. When combined O(U N log N ) where N log N is the complexity of trans-
with DST, SLM provides a better PAPR reduction. form and U represents the number of sub-blocks.

- 10.2478/jee-2015-0024
Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/25/2016 05:22:55PM
via University of Glasgow Library
 Journal of ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING 66, NO. 3, 2015 157

Pr (PAPR>l) CCDF=Pr (PAPR>l)

100 100

Original

SLM (U=8) FRFT with SLM Original

10-1 10-1

SLM
DST with SLM
10-2 10-2

SLM (U=16) SLM (U=4)

DCT with SLM
10-3 10-3
2 4 6 8 10 12 2 4 6 8 10 12
l (dB) l (dB)

Fig. 4. CCDF curves for SLM in case of NC-OFDM Fig. 5. CCDF curves of Scheme 1 for OFDM

CCDF=Pr (PAPR>l) CCDF=Pr (PAPR>l)

100 100

Original
DST with SLM Original
10-1 DCT with M-SLM 10-1

SLM DCT with SLM

DST with M-SLM SLM
-2 -2
10 10
FRFT with SLM

FRFT with M-SLM

10-3 10-3
2 4 6 8 10 12 2 4 6 8 10 12
l (dB) l (dB)

Fig. 6. CCDF curves for Scheme 2 for OFDM Fig. 7. CCDF curves for Scheme 1 for NC-OFDM

curves have been plotted for U = 4, 8, 16 . Figure 5 shows

CCDF=Pr (PAPR>l)
10 0 the simulation results of Scheme 1 in case of OFDM. Orig-
inal PAPR curve of OFDM is also plotted with PAPR
Original of 11.2 dB. All the three transforms ie DCT, DST and
10-1 DCT with M-SLM FRFT combined with SLM technique are shown to lower
this value. It is seen that SLM combined with DCT re-
duces the PAPR to about 7.4 dB. SLM based DST also
SLM
gives the same reduction as DCT transform however the
10-2
DST with M-SLM performance of FRFT in case of Scheme 1 is slightly less
than that of DCT and DST. In Scheme 2 , where data
FRFT with M-SLM are transformed by DCT, DST and FRFT before each
10-3
2 4 6 8 10 12 IFFT block in SLM. The results in Fig. 6 show a bet-
l (dB)
ter reduction if compared with Scheme 1 in cases of all
Fig. 8. CCDF curves for Scheme 2 for NC-OFDM transforms.
In case of NC-OFDM simulations were performed us-
ing 320 active sub-carriers out of the total 512 sub-
carriers. CCDF curves of NC-OFDM were plotted for
6 SIMULATION RESULTS
both schemes as shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. Results
show that by applying DCT transform PAPR of the sym-
Results of the performed simulations have been ana-
lyzed to evaluate and compare PAPR reduction perfor- bol reduces to about 1.5 dB. PAPR reduction increases
mance of the two schemes in case of both OFDM and as we increase the number of sub-carriers. Comparison
NC-OFDM systems. CCDF curves have been plotted us- of PAPR reduction performance using both schemas for
ing N = 512 QPSK modulated sub-carriers for 105 itera- OFDM and NC-OFDM is in Tab. 1. PAPR values have
tions. The results of applying only SLM technique in case been computed for N = 512 and U = 16 . This shows
of NC-OFDM systems are shown in Fig. 4. We see that that in Scheme 2 better PAPR reduction is achieved than
PAPR reduces as number of blocks (U ) increases. CCDF in Scheme 1 in both OFDM and NC-OFDM systems.

- 10.2478/jee-2015-0024
Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/25/2016 05:22:55PM
via University of Glasgow Library
158 S. Tabassum — S. Hussain — A. Ghafoor: PEAK TO AVERAGE POWER RATIO REDUCTION IN NC-OFDM SYSTEMS

Table 1. Comparison of both the schemes in case of OFDM and [7] JAYALATH, A. D. S.—TELLAMBURA, C. : Reducing the
NC-OFDM Peak to-Average Power Ratio of Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing Signal through Bit or Symbol Interleaving, Elect.
Lett. 36 No. 13 (June 2000), 1161-1163.
DCT based SLM DST based SLM FRFT based SLM
∆PAPR (dB) ∆PAPR (dB) ∆PAPR (dB) [8] TELLADO, J. : Peak to Average Power Reduction for Multi-
carrier Modulation, PhD dissertation, Stanford Univ., 2000.
OFDM
[9] GHASSEMI, A.—LAMPE, L.—ATTAR, A.—GULLIVER, T.
Scheme-1 3.6 3.6 3.4 A. : Joint Sidelobe and Peak Power Reduction in OFDM-based
Scheme-2 5.1 5.1 3.8
Cognitive Radioinbook in Proceedings of the IEEE 72nd Vehic-
NC-OFDM ular Technology Conference Fall (VTC’10).
Scheme-1 3.7 3.7 3.5 [10] RAJBANSHI, R.—WYGLINSKI, A. M.—MINDEN, G. J. :
Scheme-2 4.6 4.6 3.4 Adaptive Mode Peak to Average Power Ratio Reduction Al-
gorithm for OFDM-based Cognitive Radio.
[11] FEI, S.—YONG, Y.—SHIJIE, Z.—DECHUN, S. : A Novel
6 CONCLUSION PAPR Reduction with Trellis Shaping for NC-OFDM in Cogni-
tive Radio, Journal of Electronics (China) 26 No. 3 (May 2009).
High PAPR is one of the main drawbacks of NC- [12] SAKRAN, H.—NASR, O.—SHOKAIR, M. : An Efficient Adap-
tive Technique with Low Complexity for Reducing PAPR in
OFDM based communication systems. Several methods
OFDM based Cognitive Radio, ISRN Signal Processing, 2012.
have been used to reduce it. In this paper transformed
[13] XIN, L.—QIHUI, W.—YANG, Y. : A New SLM OFDM Scheme
based SLM technique has been used that combines con- with Low Complexity for PAPR Reduction in CR System, in
ventional SLM with different trigonometric transforms. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Wire-
Scheme 1 combines DCT/DST/FRFT with SLM by ap- less Information Technology and Systems (ICWITS’10), pp. 1–4
plying these transforms before the SLM block. However Sep 2010.
in Scheme 2 (modified SLM) these transforms are applied [14] BAUML, R. W.—FISCHER, R. F. H.—HUBER, J. B. : Re-
ducing the Peak-to-Average Power Ratio of Multicarrier Mod-
after each IFFT block in SLM. The proposed ieScheme 2 ulation by Selected Mapping, Electron. Lett. 32 No. 22 (1996),
gives better PAPR reduction as applying transform at the 2056–2057.
output of each IFFT block reduces the autocorrelation of [15] WANG, Z. : Reduction of PAPR of OFDM Signals by Combin-
the signal and also compacts the signal energy in fewer ing SLM with DCT Transform, Int. J. Communications, Net-
transform coefficients. The schemes combines the features work and System Sciences 3 (2010), 888–892.
of both SLM and all the transforms and provides better [16] BAIG, I.—JEOTI, V. : DCT Precoded SLM Technique for
reduction in the PAPR of the signal than they can provide PAPR Reduction in OFDM Systems, the 3rd International Con-
ference on Intelligent and Advanced Systems (ICIAS 2010),
when used alone. By simply combining DCT, DST and 15-17 June 2010.
FRFT with SLM PAPR of NC-OFDM symbol achieves [17] RAJBANSHI, R.—WYGLINSKI, A. M.—MINDEN, G. J. :
a considerable reduction. Therefore from the results it is Peak to Average Power Ratio Analysis for NC-OFDM Trans-
evident that the scheme that has been employed in this missions, In Proc. 64th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference,
paper gives a better reduction though at the cost of a bit Oct 2007, pp. 1351–1355.
increased complexity. Received 6 January 2014

References Saadia Tabassum received her master degree in Elec-

trical Engineering from National University of Sciences and
[1] MITOLA, J. III : Cognitive Radio: An Integrated Agent Archi- Technology (NUST), Islamabad in 2013. She is currently a
tecture for Software Defined Radio, Royal Institute of Technol- faculty member in Comsats Institute of Information Technol-
ogy (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden, May 2000. ogy (CIIT), Abbotabad. Her research focus is in wireless com-
[2] RAJBANSHI, R.—WYGLINSKI, A. M.—MINDEN, G. J. : An munications systems of next generation.
Efficient Implementation of NC-OFDM Transceivers for Cogni- Sajjad Hussain is Associate Professor at Electrical En-
tive Radios, In Proceedings of the First International Conference gineering Department, Mohammad Ali Jinnah University
on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communi- (MAJU), Islamabad. He did his PhD in 2009 from University
cations, Mykonos Island, Greece, June 2006.
of Rennes 1, Rennes in Electrical Engineering. He is focused
[3] O’NEILL, R.—LOPES, L. B. : Envelope Variations and Spectral to research in sensing algorithms for Cognitive Radios, cross
Splatter in Clipped Multicarrier Signals, Proc. IEEE PIMRC
layer optimization in Cognitive Radio networks along with
’95, Toronto, Canada, Sep 1995, pp. 71–75.
demand response of Smart Grids.
[4] JONES, A. E.—WILKINSON, T. A.—BARTON, S. K. : Block
Coding Scheme for Reduction of Peak to Mean Envelope Power Abdul Ghafoor is Associate Professor at Electrical En-
Ratio of Multicarrier Transmission Scheme, Elect. Lett. 30 No. gineering Department, National University of Sciences and
22 (Dec 1994), 2098–2099. Technology (NUST), Islamabad. He did his PhD in Model
[5] MULLER, S. H.—HUBER, V. : OFDM with Reduced Peak Reduction research area from the University of Western Aus-
to Average Power Ratio by Optimum Combination of Partial tralia in 2007. His current research interests include Model
Transmit Sequences, Elect. Lett. 33 No. 5 (Feb 1997), 368–369. Reduction, Controller Reduction, Image Enhancement, Image
[6] BAUML, R. W.—FISHER, R. F. H.—HUBER, J. B. : Reducing Fusion, Through-Wall Imaging and Cognitive Radios. He was
the Peak-to-Average Power Ratio of Multicarrier Modulation by awarded NUST Best Teacher Award - 2009 and NUST Best
Selected Mapping, Elect. Lett. 32 No. 22 (Oct 1996), 2056-2057. Researcher Award 2013.

- 10.2478/jee-2015-0024
Downloaded from PubFactory at 08/25/2016 05:22:55PM
via University of Glasgow Library