244 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 51, NO.

2, JUNE 2005

Exponential Companding Technique for PAPR Reduction in OFDM Systems

Tao Jiang, Yang Yang, Member, IEEE, and Yong-Hua Song, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—In this paper, a new nonlinear companding tech-

nique, called “exponential companding”, is proposed to reduce
the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of Orthogonal Fre-
quency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals. Unlike the -law
companding scheme, which enlarges only small signals so that
increases the average power, the schemes based on exponential
companding technique adjust both large and small signals and
can keep the average power at the same level. By transforming
the original OFDM signals into uniformly distributed signals
(with a specific degree), the exponential companding schemes
can effectively reduce PAPR for different modulation formats Fig. 1. OFDM system using nonlinear companding technique.
and sub-carrier sizes. Moreover, many PAPR reduction schemes,
such as -law companding scheme, cause spectrum side-lobes
generation, but the exponential companding schemes cause less poor system performance [2]. Many PAPR reduction schemes
spectrum side-lobes. Computer simulations, which consider a based on different techniques, such as clipping and filtering
baseband OFDM system with Additive White Gaussian Noise [3], window shaping [4], block coding [5], partial transmit
(AWGN) channels and a Solid State Power Amplifier (SSPA),
show that the proposed exponential companding schemes can
sequence (PTS) technique [6]–[10], and selective mapping
offer better PAPR reduction, Bit Error Rate (BER), and phase (SLM) technique [11], [12], phase optimization [13], tone
error performance than the -law companding scheme. reservation and injection [14], [15], and nonlinear companding
Index Terms—Non-linear companding transform, Orthogonal
transform schemes [16], [17], have been proposed in literature.
Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Peak-to-Average Specifically, it is shown in [16] that the -law companding
Power Ratio (PAPR), Solid State Power Amplifier (SSPA). scheme can reduce PAPR more effectively than the clipping
approach. However, comparing to the original signals, the
compressed signals have a larger average power level and still
I. INTRODUCTION
exhibit nonuniform distributions [17], [18].

A S A MULTI-CARRIER modulation technique, Orthog-

onal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has the
following advantages [1], [2]: (1) robust to multi-path fading,
inter-symbol interference, co-channel interference and im-
pulsive parasitic noise; (2) lower implementation complexity
compared with the single carrier solution; and (3) high spectral
efficiency in supporting broadband wireless communications.
Therefore, OFDM is believed to be a suitable technique for
broadband wireless communications and has been used in
many wireless standards, such as Digital Audio Broadcasting
(DAB), Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB-T), the
ETSI HIPERLAN/2 standard and the IEEE 802.11a standard
for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), and the IEEE
802.16a standard for Wireless Metropolitan Area Networks
(WMAN).
Original OFDM signals have very high Peak-to-Average
Power Ratio (PAPR), which require sophisticated (expensive)
radio transmitters with their high power amplifiers operating in
a very large linear range. Otherwise, nonlinear signal distortion
occurs and leads to high adjacent channel interference and
In this paper, we propose and analyze a new nonlinear
companding technique, called “exponential companding”, to
reduce the PAPR of OFDM signals. It can effectively trans-
form the original Gaussian-distributed OFDM signals into
uniform-distributed (companded) signals without changing the
average power level. Unlike the -law companding scheme,
which mainly focuses on enlarging small signals, our exponen-
tial companding schemes adjust both small and large signals
without bias so that it is able to offer better performance in
terms of PAPR reduction, Bit-Error-Rate (BER) and phase
error for OFDM systems.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section II,
a typical OFDM system is given and the high PAPR problem
is formulated. Then, a new nonlinear companding technique,
namely “exponential companding”, is proposed in Section III
to reduce PAPR. In Section IV, the performance of exponen-
tial companding schemes are studied and compared with the
-law companding scheme through computer simulations, fol-
lowed by conclusions in Section V.

II. PROBLEM FORMULATION

Manuscript received November 15, 2004; revised February 1, 2005.
T. Jiang and Y.-H. Song are with Electronic and Computer Engineering, Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of a typical OFDM system
School of Engineering and Design, Brunel University, Uxbridge UB8 3PH,
U.K. (e-mail: unique_jt@yahoo.co.uk; y.h.song@brunel.ac.uk). using the nonlinear companding technique for PAPR reduction.
Y. Yang was with Electronic and Computer Engineering, School of Engi- Let denote the number of sub-carriers used for parallel infor-
neering and Design, Brunel University, Uxbridge UB8 3PH, U.K. He is now mation transmission and let denote the
with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University Col-
lege London, London WC1E 7JE, U.K. (e-mail: yangyang@ieee.org). complex modulated symbol in a block of information
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBC.2005.847626 symbols. The outputs of the -point Inverse Fast Fourier
0018-9316/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 51, NO. 2, JUNE 2005 245

Transform (IFFT) of are the OFDM signal samples over one III. EXPONENTIAL COMPANDING TECHNIQUE
symbol interval, or mathematically We propose in this section a new nonlinear companding tech-
nique, namely “exponential companding”, that can effectively
(1) reduce the PAPR of transmitted (companded) OFDM signals by
transforming the statistics of the amplitudes of these signals into
The input information symbols are assumed to be statistically uniform distribution. The new scheme also has the advantage
independent and identically distributed (i.i.d). So when is of maintaining a constant average power level in the nonlinear
large (e.g. ), the real and imaginary parts of , de- companding operation. The strict linearity requirements on HPA
noted by and , are independent and identically can then be partially relieved.
distributed Gaussian random variables with zero mean and a Let , the power of the amplitude of companded signal
common variance , according to the central , have a uniform distribution in the interval [0, ]. The expo-
limit theorem. The amplitude, or modulus, of OFDM signal nent is called the degree of a specific exponential companding
is given by scheme. The CDF of is simply
(2) (9)
The amplitude has a Rayleigh distribution with the Cu- The amplitude of companded signal has the following
mulative Distribution Function (CDF) as follows. CDF
Prob
Prob

(10)

(3) The inverse function of is therefore

(11)
The power of OFDM signal can be calculated as
On the other hand, given that is a strictly monotonic
(4) increasing function, we have
Prob
The PAPR of OFDM signals in one symbol period is then Prob
defined as
(12)
(5) Considering the phase of input signals, the companding func-
tion is given by
The peak power occurs when modulated symbols are
added with the same phase.
By using the nonlinear companding technique, the OFDM
signals are companded before they are converted into analog (13)
waveforms and amplified by the High Power Amplifiers (HPAs).
The companded signal is given by where is the sign function. The positive constant de-
termines the average power of output signals. In order to keep
(6)
the input and output signals at the same average power level, we
where is the companding function that changes only the let
amplitudes of input signals. Then OFDM signals are trans-
mitted into the radio channel. Consider an Additive White
Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel, the received signals after
the analog-to-digital (A/D) conversion can be expressed as (14)

(7)
At the receiver side, the inverse function of is used in
where are the samples of AWGN signal . After the the de-companding operation, i.e.,
de-companding operation, we obtain
(15)
(8)
Fig. 2 shows the exponential companding function with
where is the de-companding function, or the inverse degree as a parameter. Referring to (9), the companded signals
function of . have uniformly distributed amplitudes and powers, respectively,
246 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 51, NO. 2, JUNE 2005

Fig. 2. The exponential companding function h(x).

Fig. 3. Waveforms of original OFDM signals and companded signals.

for the cases and . When , the proposed func- (a) Original OFDM signals. (b) -law companded signals. (c) Exponential
tion can compress large input signals and expand small companded signals (d = 1). (d) Exponential companded signals (d = 2).
signals simultaneously. While the -law companding scheme
can only enlarge small signals and does not change the signal
peaks, which leads to a higher average power level of output
signals [16], [17]. As seen, the differences between exponential
companding functions are ignorable when .

IV. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION

In order to verify the performance of the exponential com-

panding scheme in the reduction of PAPR and the system such
as BER, we consider a baseband OFDM system as in Fig. 1
with the number of sub-carriers throughout the com-
puter simulations. The oversampling factor is set to be 4 so that
256-point IFFT and FFT are used respectively at the transmitter
and the receiver in this section. The randomly generated input
data are modulated by Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK).
Fig. 3 compares the temporal waveforms of original OFDM
signals, -law companded signals, and exponential companded
signals with degrees and . The results for the cases
are found similar to that of and therefore not
shown in the figure. As seen, the -law companding scheme
only expands the amplitudes of small signals. While the expo-
nential companding scheme with degree expands the
small signals and compresses the large signals simultaneously.
These waveforms match the results observed in Fig. 2.
Fig. 4 shows respectively the Complementary Cumulative
Distribution Functions (CCDF) of PAPR for original OFDM
signals, -law companded signals, and exponential companded
signals with degrees , and . The CCDF
curves for degrees larger than eight are almost the same as that
for . As seen, the original OFDM signals have a Gaussian
distribution. The -law companded signals still exhibit some
quasi-Gaussian nature. While the exponential companded sig-
nals have more uniform-alike distributions, and therefore can
offer much smaller PAPR.
Due to the high PAPR, original OFDM signals have a very
sharp, rectangular-like power spectrum (see Fig. 5). This good
Fig. 4. The complementary cumulative distribution functions of original
OFDM signals and companded signals.
property will be affected by the PAPR reduction schemes, e.g.
slower spectrum roll-off, more spectrum side-lobes, and higher
adjacent channel interference. Many PAPR reduction schemes
cause spectrum side-lobes generation, but the exponential com-
panding schemes cause less spectrum side-lobes. As seen in
Fig. 5, our exponential companding scheme (with degree )
has much less impact on the original power spectrum comparing
to the -law companding scheme. It is the major reason that
the exponential companding scheme not only enlarges the small
amplitude signals but also compresses the large amplitude sig-
nals, while maintains the average power unchanged by prop-
erly choosing parameters, which can increase the immunity of
small amplitude signals from noise. The proposed scheme main-
tains the same average power level as that of original OFDM
signals, but the -law companding scheme increases the average
power level and therefore requires a larger linear operation re-
gion in HPA. The power spectrums for other degree values (not
shown) are found similar to that of .
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 51, NO. 2, JUNE 2005
Fig. 5. The spectrums of original OFDM signals and companded signals.
Fig. 6. Bit error rate under different companding schemes.
To evaluate the Bit Error Rate (BER) and phase error per-
formance of exponential companding schemes, we consider
to use AWGN channel with a Solid State Power Amplifier
(SSPA). Most radio systems often employ HPAs in the transmit
to obtain sufficient transmit power. SSPA is the one of the
well known classes of HPAs. The basic RF architecture of the
SSPA is based on a parallel module design approach and it is
available in module and rack mount configurations. This basic
architecture of the SSPA can provide significant reliability ad-
vantages. It is the advantage that SSPA can follow an advance
in Gallium Arsenide device technology. The SSPA also has
a decided advantage in operating voltage. An SSPA typically
operates with a DC voltage input in the very low VDC range
and these low DC voltages there exists a wide variety of reliable
power supply solutions. So a higher power transistor enables
the amplifier designer to increase the output power capability of
an SSPA. According to the model proposed in [19], [20], SSPA
produces no phase distortion and only the AM/AM conversion
can be expressed as following
(16)
247
Fig. 7. Phase error under different companding schemes.
where and are input and output signals respectively.
The parameter is a random positive integer and it has been set
to be the typical value 2 in this paper.
Figs. 6 and 7 show the performance of BER and phase
error versus Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) under different
companding schemes. The performance bounds are obtained
by ignoring the effect of SSPA and directly transmitting the
original OFDM signals directly through the AWGN channels.
Comparing to the -law companding scheme, our exponential
companding scheme (with degree ) can offer much
smaller BER and phase error, which are very close to the
performance bounds. Specifically, to achieve a BER of ,
the minimum required SNR is 11.06 dB (performance bound).
The required SNRs under the exponential companding and
the -law companding schemes are 12.03 dB and 16.00 dB,
respectively. The performance curves for other degree values
are found similar to that of and therefore omitted.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Non-linear companding transform is an effective technique in
reducing the PAPR of OFDM signals. In addition, the schemes
based on companding technique have low implementation com-
plexity and no constraint on modulation format and sub-carrier
size. In this paper, we have proposed and evaluated a new
nonlinear companding technique, called “exponential com-
panding”. It can adjust the amplitudes of both large and small
input signals, while maintain the average power unchanged
by properly choosing transform parameters, so as to make
the output signals have a uniform distribution (with a specific
degree). Simulation results have shown that our exponential
companding schemes could offer better system performance
in terms of PAPR reduction, power spectrum, BER, and phase
error than the -law companding scheme.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. Y. Wu, Editor-in-Chief
of the IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, and anonymous re-
viewers for their valuable comments which helped to improve
the presentation of the paper.
248
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