CONSTANT BINARYOFDM PHASEMODULATION

ENVELOPE
Steve C. Thompson John G. Proakis James R. Zeidler
Center for Wireless Communications
University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093-0407
sct @ucsd.edu

Angle Modularor
ABSTRACT : _. ~

?.,.'~..-.: 1
*%~@koi, Power Amplifier
Data OFDM - -,, ~ .$ .
In this paper a new approach is presented to alleviate the t t
undesirable efects due to the high peak-to-average power High PAPR 0 dB PAPR
ratio of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing. A class
Fig. 1. Standard OFDM with transformation (shaded)
siRnalinR called OFDM angle modulation is presented.
of~.
These constant envelope OFDM based sinnals - guarantee
a OdB PAPR thus are well suited for eficient nonlinear
[IO]. Pre-distortion techniques such as clipping and filtering,
power amplification. This paper focuses on binary OFDM
peak windowing, and peak cancellation have been studied
'

phase modulation, which is a special case of OFDM angle

modulation.
1. INTRODUCTION
The high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) inherent to
orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OF'DM) is one
of its primary drawbacks. The superposition of the orthogonal
subcarriers yields a waveform with a large dynamic range that
is not well suited for nonlinear power amplifiers (PA) used in
the wireless environment [I], [2]. To reduce the undesirable
effect of nonlinear intermodulation distortion output power
backoff (OBO) is typically required. This O B 0 reduces the
operational efficiency of the PA and also the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR) of the system. For example, a class-A power
amplifier operating with a 10 dB O B 0 has an efficiency of
less than 5% and a 10 dB loss in signal power [I]. Still, with
this large backoff in power, intermodulation distortion is not
eliminated completely which impacts bit-error-rates (BER).
The nonlinear distortion imposes out-of-band spectral growth
thus reducing the spectral efficiencies of OFDM. Furthermore,
the low power efficiency can be detrimental to mobile devices
which operate on battery power.
Much attention has been given to the PAPR problem [31-[6].
Coding techniques whereby data symbols are mapped to a
subset of OFDM waveforms with relatively low PAPR have
11. THEBASEBAND
been extensively investigated [7], [8].Techniques based on
scrambling subcarrier phase andlor amplitude in a pseudo-
random way known at the receiver have been presented [9], The OFDM baseband waveform can be represented by
This work was supported by the UCSD Center for Wireless Communi-
cations and by the CoRe research gant 00-10071
[I 1]-[13]. Researchers are actively pursuing amplifier designs
-
with ereater linearity and efficiency to accommodate signals
-
with large PAPR's [I] and signal processing combined with
amplifier design techniques have been reported [141. The
effectiveness of these methods vary and each comes with its
own inherent trade-off in terms of bit-error-rate performance,
implementation complexity, a n d o r spectral efficiency.
This work investigates a new approach to PAPR reduction in
which the OFDM waveform is transformed into a conslanten-
velope OdB peak-to-average power ratio waveform. A simple
block diagram is shown in Fig. 1. The nature of the transfor-
mation is to use the OFDM waveform to angle modulate the
carrier signal using either phase modulation (OFDM-PM) or
frequency modulation (OFDM-FM). The constant envelope
property of the resultant signal achieves the goal of PAPR
reduction and is well suited for highly efficient amplification.
The out-of-band spectral growth associated with nonlinear
distortion is eliminated.
This paper presents the general form of OFDM angle modu-
lation including OFDM-FM and OFDM-PM. Bandwidth con-
siderations are discussed and performance of binary OFDM-
PM is studied in the additive white Gaussian noise channel
with a proposed receiver structure. System performance com-
parisons are made between OFDM and OFDM-PM.
OFDM WAVEFORM
N-1
~ ( t= )A , dkeJ2*'', 05t 5T (1)
k=O

621

0-7803-814O.Om3$17.M00 2M3 IliZE

 I 70

6
Ea

-
3
.- 0 9"
-
e

F$ -2 t,
4
20

10
-8

0- ~

-'OO 0.1 0.2 03 0.4 0.5 0.8 0.7 08 0.9 1 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.S OS 0.1 08 0.9 1
normflied lime: I I T n O M l i k J time: f I T

where A, is a gain constant, N is the number of subcarriers, where h, is the modulation index for OFDM-PM. Since $ ( t )
T is the signaling interval, and data symbol dk modulates the is required to be real-valued the real part of the OFDM
k" subcarrier eJ2*/'. The data symbols are chosen from a message signal is used in (3) and (4).
complex set defined by an M-point signal constellation such
as PSK or QAM. The real and imaginary parts of v(f) are In these definitions the complex-valued OFDM baseband
N-1 waveform (1) is used. Typically this signal is computed
%[v(t)] = A Y %[dk]COS2nkt/T -3[dk] sin2nkrlT in discrete-time by applying the discrete Fourier tsansform
k=O
(DFT) to the complex-valued data symbols. Alternately, since
and a real-valued signal is needed for @(I), the discrete cosine
N-1 transform (DCT) could be used to calculate an OFDM
3[v(t)] =A, 9[dk]cos2nkf/T+R[dk]sin2nkt/T waveform with 2N PAM data symbols modulating cosines
k=O separated by 1/2T Hz [IS]. Either approach has the same
bandwidth requirement.
Figure 2 illustrates the large dynamic range of the OFDM
signal. Random phase alignment of the subcarriers results
in large signal peaks. Figure 3 plots the squared envelope, IV. BINARYOFDM PHASE MODULATION
% [ v ( r ) ] * + 3 [ ~ ( r ) ]with
~ , the peak and average signal powers.
For this example the peak-to-average power ratio is more than A special case of OFDM angle modulation uses phase
6dB. modulation with binary data symbols resulting in the binary
OFDM-PM bandpass signal
111. OFDM ANGLEMODULATION

The OFDM angle modulation handpass waveform is repre-

sented as for 0 5 f 5 T where dk E {kl} for all k. It is convenient to
s ( t ) =A,cos(2nfcf +@(f)) (2) define the message signal as m ( f )= @(r)/hp.The constant
A, is chosen to normalize the average power of the message
where A, and fc are the carrier amplitude and frequency.
signal, that is P,, = Jlm(r)df/T = 1 with A, = ,/?@?. The
For OFDM-FM the instantaneous frequency of the carrier is
proportional to the OFDM message thus the phase signal in ! + = J l @ ( f ) d r / T= h:. The
power of the phase signal is then P
(2) is . average power of (5) is Aj/2 and the signal energy is E, =
A:T/2. Since there are N bits of information per transmission
@(r) -2nh,[%[v(r)]dr (3) the average bit energy is !Ea =AfT/2N.
where h, is the modulation index. In OFDM-PM the carrier
Figure 4 shows the binary OFDM message signal from Fig.
phase is proportional to the OFDM message signal, hence
2 and the resulting constant envelope OFDM-PM bandpass
@(f)= hpRlV(f)l (4) signal.

622
 Ha PAPR WB PAPR

Fig. 4. (a) Binary OFDM message signal and (b) the resulting OFDM-PM
signal. N = 16. h, = 0.8. / c = 20/T Fig. 5 . Block diagram of OFDM-PM receiver

A. Bandwidth Considerations HI(f)centered at fc. This front-end filter is assumed to

pass s(r) with negligible distortion while rejecting out-of-band
In general, evaluating the power spectral density of an angle noise. Its output is
modulated process if quite involved due to the nonlinear
r(r) = s ( t ) + n ( t )
nature of the modulation. However some simple observations (7)
can give a rough idea about the bandwidth requirements of = s ( t ) +n,(t)cos2nfcr -n,(t)sin2nfct
OFDM-PM. where n,(t) and ns(t) are the quadrature components of the
zero-mean filtered Gaussian noise n(t). Equation 7 can be
As shown above, the modulation index controls the phase
represented as
signal power Tq= h$ For very small h, the phase excursions
are low and the OFDM-PM signal approximates to r(t) = s ( t ) + J=-cos(2nft+
s ( f )% A,cosZnf,t -A,hpm(r)sin2nfCt (6) tan-' [ns(f ) h( t ) ] ) (8)

This can be seen by expanding s(r) into a Taylor series +

= s ( t ) V.(t)cos (2nf,t +e&))
and taking only the first two terms [16]. This narrowband where V,,(t) and e,(() represent the envelope and the phase
case shows that the bandwidth of the signal is at least 2W of the noise process. Equation (8) simplifies to
where W is the bandwidth of the OFDM message m(t). As
h, becomes larger (6) is no longer valid and the bandwidth r(t) =R(f)cos(2nfcr+$(t) +$&)) (9)
of the signal broadens. As discussed in 1171, a bandwidth
where R ( r ) is the envelope of r(t) and
approximation know as the Carson's rule is B = 2(max[$(t)l+
l)W =2(h,&+ 1)W. With a large number of subcarriers
this Carson bandwidth is overly conservative since rnax[$(t)]
has a low occurrence rate of approximately 2-N. However, for is the phase error term. Treatment of these trigonometric
large N the phase signal is accurately modeled as a Gaussian identities are standard in modem textbooks 1161, 1171.
distributed process thus the root-mean-square bandwidth B =
2&W = 2h,W is a more appropriate measure j171. For The phase deviation of the angle demodulator input is
the purposes of this paper the bandwidth of OFDM-PM is
B = max[2W,2hPW]. v(t)= @ ( t -)+ @ e @ ) (11)
With the assumption of a high carrier-to-noise ratio (CNR)
A,>> V,(t), (IO) becomes
B. AWGN Analysis

In this section the performance of a binary OFDM-PM

receiver is evaluated. As shown in Fig. 5 the OFDM-PM The output of the angle demodulator is
receiver consists of an angle demodution front-end used to
Y ( t )= W r ) (13)
detect the phase of the received signal followed by a standard
OFDM receiver to make decisions on the transmitted data where K is a gain. With the large CNR assumption and
symbols. Each block will be analyzed below. choosing K = lfh,,

I) Angle Demodulation Front-end: The zero-mean additive ~ ( t=)m ( r ) . + W ) (14)

white Gaussian noise (AWGN), nw(r), with power-spectral where
density S.,(f) = N0/2 is added to s ( f ) and the result is Vdt)
passed through the bandpass filter with transfer function
Y,(t) = -sin(@,(t) - h,m(t)) (15)
hdc

623
The power spectral density of (15) is a function of n,(t) and
n , ( f ) which depend on the bandpass filter H,(f).Choosing
the ideal filter to be
2 ) OFDM Receiver: From (20) the zero mean additive
Gaussian noise is flat over the OFDM message frequency
band thus appears white. The OFDM receiver block correlates
the noisy input with the N subcarriers in parallel. The AID
converter samples z ( t ) at N equally spaced time instances
over 0 2 r <_ T ,

with a suitable bandwidth B, it is well known [16]-[18] that

the power spectrum of (15) is flat over the in-band power of
m(t) such that

&(f) = N,/(@Af) for If1 5 W (17)

The output of the serial-to-parallel converter is passed to the
Figure 6 compares the noise spectra for standard OFDM in bank of correlators. The 1" discrete-time correlation is
AWGN with that of OFDM-PM. It shows that while the
noise floor of the OFDM system can only be controlled by
increased signal power (or reduced noise power) the noise
floor for OFDM-PM can additionally be controlled by the
modulation index h,. This illustrates the classic feature of
angle modulated systems where bandwidth can b e traded for
SNR. The signal component is calculated to be
The final stage of the front-end block is the lowpass filter
used to pass the message signal m(r) and reject out-of-band
U-,
'l .
SI = m[i]cos27di/~
noise from Yn(r). The ideal transfer function of the filter is i=O

=~ ~ 1 ~ d ~ c o s 2 ~ i / N ~ c o s 2 (24)
n l i / N
i=O k-0

and its output is

z ( t ) =m(r)+Z,(t) (19) The zero mean Gaussian noise term, NI, has variance

The power spectral density and autocorrelation function of

the noise term Zn(r) is E[N:] =E [ rZZn[i]cos2di/N
,I'
and
I N-I N-1 i2 - il

x [cos(Znl(iz -il)/N)
+ cos(Znl(i*+ i,)/N)]

The bandwidth of m ( t ) ,defined by the mainlobe of the highest

frequency subcarrier, is N I T . For minimal distortion by the
lowpass filter (18) its bandwidth is

N
W =a-
T

624
where a 2 1. For integer values of a,(25) simplifies to
I N-I
E [N:] = Rz"(0) [I +cos(4di/N)]
,=O
WNo N-'
= 22 1 +cos(4nli/N)
i=o
Excluding the zero frequency subcarrier, the average proba-
bility of error is
where Q(x) = Jxmexp(-y2/2)dy/d%.
3) The Threshold Effect: Equation (28) shows performance
gains with increased modulation index h,. This trade has a
limit however due to the so-called threshold efeci. By in-
creasing the modulation index the signal bandwidth broadens.
The high CNR requirement in (12) is jeopardized since the
bandpass filter passes more noise thus increasing the power
of n(t). A conservative threshold C N R is (181
CNR, = lOdB
The above analysis is then valid with the condition
A:/2
CNR = -> CNR, = 10
BNo
C. Resulis and Discussion
Figure 7 shows binary OFDM-PM performance curves for
various modulation indices. A comparison is made to standard
binary OFDM. The OFDM system performances curve is that
, therefore the O B 0 is assumed
power amplifier saturation.
The OFDM-PM curves are also idealized since a from (26)
is set to unity and the filters from Fig. 5 are assumed to be
ideal as exnressed in (16) . , The OFDM-PM svstem
. , and (18).
performance curves account for 6dB less hackoff than the
OFDM system, or equivalently, the OFDM-PM system has a
6dB power gain over the OFDM system.
(27)
Fig. 7. Performance of binary OFDM-PM compared to binary OFDM
(dash) wilh a 6dB power gain. a = I, OFDM and OFDM-PM scales are
below and above the figure, respectively
As indicated by (28) and Fig. 6 the performance gains
are accomplished with increasing the modulation index. For
example, at Eb/No (OFDM-PM) = 16dB. the OFDM-PM
system using a modulation index of h, = 0.8 performs at
around compared to an error rate of when using
h, = 0.6. Therefore performance gains are possible without
increasing signal power at the cost of spreading the signal
spectrum. Comparing the OFDM and OFDM-PM perfor-
mance, several dB gains are seen with h, > 0.7.
The r.m.s. bandwidth expression B = max(2W,2h,W] is used
to calculate the threshold boundary (30). With this OFDM-PM
bandwidth measure, comparable BER performance to ideal
OFDM is seen with a spectral efficiency reduction of roughly
(29) 112. This spectral efficiency reduction is less when compared
to OFDM with a higher power amplifier saturation occurrence
rate.
V. CONCLUSION
Constant envelope binary OFDM phase modulated is pre-
sented and analyzed in the additive white Gaussian noise
channel with a proposed receiver. Rough bandwidth require-
ments are predicted using the Carson's rule and the root-
mean-square bandwidth for Gaussian angle modulated pro-
cesses. In studying the AWGN performance a high carrier-
to-noise ratio assumption (CNR > IOdB) is made to linearize
the analysis. Ideal filters are assumed in the receiver front-
end. Estimates are made on the transmitted data symbols with
the use of the discrete Fourier transform.
The modulation index controls the spectral spreading and
detection performance of OF'DM-PM. Improved hit-error-
rate performance is seen with increased modulation index at
625
fixed transmission power. Performance comparisons to ideal
binary OFDM are made with a 6dB output power backoff
differential. Comparable BER performance i s observed with
improved utilization of the power amplifier at the cost of
spectral efficiency.
VI. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors want to thank Professor Ray Pettit from Cal-
ifornia State University, Northridge and Dr. Richard North
from SPAWAR Systems Center, San Diego. Also, thanks to
Mike Geile from Nova Engineering (Cincinnati, OH) for his
creative ideas at the genesis of this research.
ond Sysienis II: Analog ond Digilnl Signal Processing. vol. 46, no. I I ,
pp. 1329-1336, 1999.
1151
. . 1. Tan and G. L. Stuber, "Constant Envelope Multi-Carrier Modula-
tion:' in Proceedings of IEEE Milirory Contrnunicarionr Conference.
vol. I, (Anaheim), pp. 6 0 7 4 1 1, Oct. ZWZ.
[I61 R. Zeirner and W. Tranter, Principles of Comnzunicorionr: Syslenu,
Modulorion, and Noise. Wiley, 4* ed., 1995.
[I71 I. G. Proakis and M. Salehi, Conintunicorion Systems Engineering.
Prentice-Hall, 1994.
[I81 1. 1. Downing, Modulation Syrrenis and Noire. Prentice-Hall, 1964.
[I91 1. G. Proakis. Digirol Cornmunicotionr. McGraw-Hill, 4Ih ed., ZWI.

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