Clipping noise cancellation in OFDM systems using oversampled signal reconstruction

Clipping the OFDM signals in the digital part of the transmitter is one of the simplest methods to reduce the peak factor. However, it suffers from additional clipping distortion, peak regrowth after digital to analog conversion, and out-of-band radiation in the case of oversampled sequence clipping. We use oversampled sequence clipping to combat the effect of peak regrowth and propose a method to reconstruct the clipped samples and mitigate the clipping distortion in the presence of channel noise at the expense of bandwidth expansion. We show through extensive simulations that by slightly increasing the bandwidth of the system, we can significantly improve the performance while limiting the maximum amplitude of the analog signal

Analysis of Improved µ-Law Companding Technique for OFDM Systems

YesHigh Peak-to-Average-Power Ratio (PAPR) of transmitted signals is a common problem in broadband telecommunication systems using an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation scheme, as it increases transmitter power consumption. In consumer applications where it impacts mobile terminal battery life and infrastructure running costs, this is a major factor in customer satisfaction. Companding techniques have been recently used to alleviate this high PAPR. In this paper, a companding scheme with an offset, amidst two nonlinear companding levels, is proposed to achieve better PAPR reduction while maintaining an acceptable bit error rate (BER) level, resulting in electronic products of higher power efficiency. Study cases have included the effect of companding on the OFDM signal with and without an offset. A novel closed-form approximation for the BER of the proposed companding scheme is also presented, and its accuracy is compared against simulation results. A method for choosing best companding parameters is presented based on contour plots. Practical emulation of a real time OFDM-based system has been implemented and evaluated using a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA)

Equation-Method for correcting clipping errors in OFDM signals

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the digital modulation technique used by 4G and many other wireless communication systems. OFDM signals have significant amplitude fluctuations resulting in high peak to average power ratios which can make an OFDM transmitter susceptible to non-linear distortion produced by its high power amplifiers (HPA). A simple and popular solution to this problem is to clip the peaks before an OFDM signal is applied to the HPA but this causes in-band distortion and introduces bit-errors at the receiver. In this paper we discuss a novel technique, which we call the Equation-Method, for correcting these errors. The Equation-Method uses the Fast Fourier Transform to create a set of simultaneous equations which, when solved, return the amplitudes of the peaks before they were clipped. We show analytically and through simulations that this method can, correct all clipping errors over a wide range of clipping thresholds. We show that numerical instability can be avoided and new techniques are needed to enable the receiver to differentiate between correctly and incorrectly received frequency-domain constellation symbols

Massive MIMO transmission techniques

Next generation of mobile communication systems must support astounding data traffic increases, higher data rates and lower latency, among other requirements. These requirements should be met while assuring energy efficiency for mobile devices and base stations. Several technologies are being proposed for 5G, but a consensus begins to emerge. Most likely, the future core 5G technologies will include massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) and beamforming schemes operating in the millimeter wave spectrum. As soon as the millimeter wave propagation difficulties are overcome, the full potential of massive MIMO structures can be tapped. The present work proposes a new transmission system with bi-dimensional antenna arrays working at millimeter wave frequencies, where the multiple antenna configurations can be used to obtain very high gain and directive transmission in point to point communications. A combination of beamforming with a constellation shaping scheme is proposed, that enables good user isolation and protection against eavesdropping, while simultaneously assuring power efficient amplification of multi-level constellations

Analytical Characterization and Optimum Detection of Nonlinear Multicarrier Schemes

It is widely recognized that multicarrier systems such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are suitable for severely time-dispersive channels. However, it is also recognized that multicarrier signals have high envelope fluctuations which make them especially sensitive to nonlinear distortion effects. In fact, it is almost unavoidable to have nonlinear distortion effects in the transmission chain. For this reason, it is essential to have a theoretical, accurate characterization of nonlinearly distorted signals not only to evaluate the corresponding impact of these distortion effects on the system’s performance, but also to develop mechanisms to combat them. One of the goals of this thesis is to address these challenges and involves a theoretical characterization of nonlinearly distorted multicarrier signals in a simple, accurate way. The other goal of this thesis is to study the optimum detection of nonlinearly distorted, multicarrier signals. Conventionally, nonlinear distortion is seen as a noise term that degrades the system’s performance, leading even to irreducible error floors. Even receivers that try to estimate and cancel it have a poor performance, comparatively to the performance associated to a linear transmission, even with perfect cancellation of nonlinear distortion effects. It is shown that the nonlinear distortion should not be considered as a noise term, but instead as something that contains useful information for detection purposes. The adequate receiver to take advantage of this information is the optimum receiver, since it makes a block-by-block detection, allowing us to exploit the nonlinear distortion which is spread along the signal’s band. Although the optimum receiver for nonlinear multicarrier schemes is too complex, due to its necessity to compare the received signal with all possible transmitted sequences, it is important to study its potential performance gains. In this thesis, it is shown that the optimum receiver outperforms the conventional detection, presenting gains not only relatively to conventional receivers that deal with nonlinear multicarrier signals, but also relatively to conventional receivers that deal with linear, multicarrier signals. We also present sub-optimum receivers which are able to approach the performance gains associated to the optimum detection and that can even outperform the conventional linear, multicarrier schemes

PAPR reduction in multicarrier modulation techniques based visible light communication systems

Visible light communication (VLC) is an optical wireless communication (OWC) technology that has the potential to provide high data rate transmission for indoor applications. VLC is a promising alternative technology with a large and unlicensed spectrum to complement the congested radio frequency (RF) based communication in order to meet the exponential growth and popularity of smart devices, data intensive services and applications. The use of low-cost commercially available front-end devices further highlights the attraction of VLC system. However, nonlinear dynamic range of front-end devices and optical channel impairments limit full exploitation of VLC available modulation bandwidth. To fully benefit from the inherent resources and mitigate these limitations, multicarrier modulation (MCM) techniques are adopted. However, these techniques are affected by high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) which imposes constraints on the limited dynamic range of the front-end devices and the average radiated optical power. The main focus throughout this thesis is to reduce the high PAPR of MCM modulation techniques-based VLC system by implementing pilot-assisted (PA) technique. Additionally, performance of PAPR reduced modulation techniques is investigated through analytical, simulation, and experimentally. This thesis first presents background of VLC system principles including the front-end devices, VLC channel, system impairments and challenges, and employed solutions. The principles, limitations, and performance of MCM modulation variants that are implemented in this work are presented. Moreover, principles of PAPR challenge in MCM based VLC, PAPR evaluation, impact on the transmitted signal as well as the existing PAPR reduction techniques are discussed. Looking at the gap, a PA is implemented as PAPR reduction technique which is presented in this work including its implementation and performance. Following that, multiple experimental studies on PAPR reduction of PA technique are presented. Two experimental demonstrations on the efficacy of PA PAPR reduction for PAM-DMT and DCO-OFDM based VLC using a single blue LED are presented. These studies are comparing the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of the proposed systems with conventional counterparts over a range of sampling rate. This shows that, the proposed systems perform better than conventional systems without PAPR reduction. The results are validated through simulation. Other two experimental studies on the previous systems with parameters optimisation and available modulation bandwidth utilisation are presented, which show that the proposed systems outperform the conventional systems in terms of BER. This is followed by investigating the PA PAPR reduction effect on the achievable data rate of a wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) based VLC system using three different LEDs for PAPR reduced DCO-OFDM and PAM-DMT systems. The proposed systems have achieved more than 8% data rate higher than that of conventional systems without BER performance degradation. Finally, analytical investigation of clipping noise that leads to distortion in a VLC system due to front-end devices limitations is presented. To mitigate the clipping noise, PAPR of the system is reduced by the PA technique. The analytical BER performance of the system with PAPR reduction is verified through simulation and then compared to that of the conventional system without PAPR reduction at similar clipping levels. The PA proposed system shows better BER performance at all clipping levels

Rapid Dynamic Power Rail Switching of OFDM Signal Amplifiers

Global resource usage and allocation is becoming an increasingly critical topic. Efficiency is at the heart of a plethora of current research fields from reducing energy consumption in the manufacturing industry, to increasing energy generation from renewable sources, or reusing waste materials for alternative applications. The telecommunications industry is no different, OFDM as a modulation format is ubiquitous and popular due to its spectral efficiency and robustness to interference but its major drawback is its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) meaning that its efficiency is compromised. A review of existing methods for improving OFDM signal amplifier efficiency showed a lack of innovative techniques for power supply control for such amplifiers. This thesis proposes two unique solutions to innovate efficiency for a range of applications. Firstly, a novel power supply control technique to improve the efficiency of OFDM signal amplifiers based on probabilistic analyses. The probability density function of an OFDM signal was analysed and optimum switching thresholds were determined to maximise the efficiency of the power supply. The proposed mechanism considers the theory of Golomb rulers and perfect difference sets, specifically the conversion from linear rulers to modular to achieve a much greater system implementation efficiency. The result is a dynamic fast-switching multi-level power supply which achieves the main benefits of Doherty and Chireix amplifiers but without requiring multiple amplifiers. This class A-G amplifier topology can achieve a 63% efficiency increase compared to amplifiers with single-level voltage supplies. Secondly, a generalised resource management technique known as Total Resource Utilisation Shuffling Technique (TRUST) to tackle the wider issue of resource utilisation and management. The focus for TRUST in this work is on batteries but it could be applied to a wide range of resources, not necessarily in the technology sector. Keywords: Chireix, Class A-G, Doherty, Golomb, OFDM, PAPR, PD