IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 50, NO.

4, DECEMBER 2004 425

Threshold IBO of HPA in the Predistorted OFDM Communication System

Heung-Gyoon Ryu, Member, IEEE, Ju Sok Park, and Jin-Soo Park, Member, IEEE

AbstractOrthogonal frequency division modulation (OFDM)

system is very useful for the multi-path channel and highly band-
width-efficient system. However, OFDM signal shows the high peak
to average power ratio (PAPR) so that nonlinear distortion can
happen in the high power amplifier (HPA). This paper studies BER
performance variation according to input back off (IBO) values
when the predistorter is used for the compensation for the HPA
nonlinearity. In the case of the solid state power amplifier (SSPA)
of nonlinearity parameter = 0 5 and IBO = 0 dB, the system
with predistorter is poorer than the one without predistorter. But
this situation is inverted, if IBO is increased from 0 dB to 3 dB. So,
we can find that there is a threshold value of IBO for the predis-
torter to effectively compensate for the nonlinear SSPA when the
sub-carrier number and value are changed. This threshold IBO
value is proportional to the nonlinearity parameter value but it is Fig. 1. Block diagram of OFDM system with an HPA.
nearly independent of the sub-carrier number because amplitude
and distribution are normalized. The OFDM system with predis-
torter can be improved only when thee IBO value is higher than
the threshold value.
Index TermsHPA nonlinearity and predistorter, OFDM,
PAPR, threshold IBO.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 2. Predistorter and HPA.

O FDM SYSTEM has been used for the high-speed dig-

ital communications such as digital audio broadcasting
(DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB), asymmetric digital
subscriber line (ADSL) and wireless local area network (LAN)
due to the high bandwidth efficiency and robustness to the nar-
rowband interference and severe multi-path fading [1]. In spite
of many advantages, a major drawback of OFDM is a high
PAPR problem that causes the nonlinear distortion in HPA and
reduces power efficiency.
There have been many conventional works to address this
high PAPR problem. The simplest method is to back-off OFDM
signals form the saturation region to the linear region at the cost
of power efficiency of HPA. Also, the PAPR reduction methods
have been proposed as a countermeasure. Clipping or clipping
plus clipping noise estimation in the receiver side is the simplest
one among the PAPR reduction methods. However, it causes
a serious in-band and out-of-band clipping noise and adjacent
channel interference (ACI) [2], [3]. Also, it is very difficult to
Manuscript received May 10, 2004; revised July 8, 2004. This work was sup-
ported by the RRC program of MOST and KOSEF.
H.-G. Ryu and J. S. Park are with the Department of Electronic Engineering
and the Research Institute of Computer, Information & Communication,
Chungbuk National University, San 48 Kaesin-dong, Cheongju, Chungbuk,
361-763, Republic of Korea.
J.-S. Park is with the Department of Information & Communication En-
gineering and Regional Research Center for Information & Communication,
Chongju University, 36 Naedok-Dong, Cheongju, Chungbuk, 360-764, Re-
public of Korea.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TBC.2004.837878
0018-9316/04$20.00 2004 IEEE
estimate the clip noise for reconstructing the original signal
from the clipped signal. Selective mapping (SLM) and partial
transmit sequence (PTS) belong to the phase shift method by
which the signal may be distorted [4], [5]. However, it requires
many IFFT stages and complex structure so that a lot of compu-
tation may be a big problem. Also, it is necessary to send side in-
formation (SI) in order to recover the original signal in receiver.
Thirdly, we can limit the PAPR of the OFDM signal below 3
dB by block coding. But, the more the number of sub-carrier
increases for the higher data rate, the lower the coding rate and
the lower bandwidth efficiency goes down [6]. Finally, in 2002,
Yuanbin Guo, Joseph R. Cavallaro studied on the OFDM system
with pre-distorter in order to compensate the nonlinearity of
SSPA. Their paper covered the BER performance of OFDM in
the SSPA and a polynomial modeling of pre-distorter. However,
they only said the advantage of the pre-distorter [7].
This paper studies BER performance variation according to
IBO values when the predistorter is used for the compensation
for the HPA nonlinearity. So, we find that there is a threshold
or cross-over value of IBO for the predistorter to effectively
compensate for the nonlinear SSPA via the computer simula-
tion when the sub-carrier number and parameter value that is
related with the AM/AM nonlinearity are changed. The main
source of the nonlinear distortion is inside the system, not
outside the communication system. The nonlinear distortion
is independent of the channel environment, AWGN or fading
channel. For the simplicity, AWGN channel is assumed.
426 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 50, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004

Fig. 3. AM/AM characteristics of SSPA (A = 1).

II. SYSTEM MODEL B. Characteristic of HPA and Predistorter

A. OFDM System Predistorter is used for the nonlinear compensation as in the
Fig. 1 is the block diagram of OFDM system in additive white Fig. 2. The transfer function is the inverse function of the
Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. An OFDM modulated signal nonlinearity. The transfer function of the predistorter, can
is be found as follows. If , the predistortion is well
made. So, the following conditions must be satisfied [8].

(4)

where and are the amplitude and phase of signal in

(1) front of the predistorter, and are the AM/AM, AM/PM
conversion function of HPA. and are amplitude and
where is the number of sub-carrier and is symbol duration. phase of the predistorter output. Thus, the input-output relation-
The -th sub-carrier frequency is . And is equal to ship for the predistorter is obtained by inversion.
. Therefore, becomes
(5)

(2) Lets consider SSPA as HPA. AM/AM and AM/PM conver-

sions of the SSPA are written as (6). The parameter is related
with the AM/AM nonlinearity. The characteristic of HPA be-
where is QPSK modulation data and it is made in the comes linear as the parameter is larger. AM/PM is zero.
mapper,
PARR of the signal in (1) is defined as
(6)

(3)
(7)
The PAPR of the continuous-time OFDM signal cannot be In the inverse function of SSPA, there is a discontinuity at
accurately computed at the Nyquist sampling rate which corre- . Thus, we have to restrict the amplitude as
sponds to samples per OFDM symbol. In this case, signal ( : saturation point, ).
peaks may be skipped and PAPR estimates are not correct. So,
oversampling is necessary and factor of 4 is sufficient for the
accurate calculation of PAPR. Oversampling can be performed (8)
by the simple computation of the 4N-point zero-padded IFFT
of the data frame. In this paper, we use the oversampling by a
factor of 4 for all calculations of the PAPR. (9)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 50, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004 427

Fig. 4. Characteristics of SSPA, predistorter and SSPA + predistorter. Fig. 5. BERs of SSPA and SSPA + predistorter (sub-carrier = 16, = 0 5).
p :

Fig. 4 shows the AM/AM conversion characteristics of SSPA,

predistorter, and SSPA predistorter. As shown in Fig. 3, even
though the predistorter is used, the signal is clipped by , if
the input signal has higher amplitude than (Region A). So,
we call this as soft clipping or soft limiting. Thus, BER degra-
dation may happen since the signal distortion like the clipping
may be generated. However, if the input signal resides in the
region lower than (Region B), BER performance will be im-
proved because of the linearization by predistorter. So, BER per-
formance depends heavily on the signal distribution although
the predistorter is used for the nonlinear compensation. Also, it
is important to find out the relationship between the IBO and the
probability density function (PDF) of signal in order to get the
BER improvement.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Like as the equivalent SSPA model is normalized, the power
of the one OFDM symbol should be also normalized to 1.0.
Then, we can find the simulation results. It is assumed that the
sub-carrier numbers of the OFDM system with QPSK modu- Fig. 6. BERs of SSPA and SSPA + predistorter (sub-carrier = 64, = 0 5).
p :

lation are 8, 16, 32 and 64 through the AWGN channel. Fig. 5

shows the BER performance of the system with predistorter and
without predistorter according to the several IBO values (0, 3,
6, 9 dB) and the sub-carrier number of 16, which parameter
value is 0.5. When IBO is 0 dB, the system without predistorter
takes 1 dB SNR gain than the system with predistorter to meet
. However, when IBO is 3 dB, the system with pre-
distorter takes 0.5 dB SNR gain than the system without predis-
torter. The more the IBO increases, the better BER performance
and the lower power efficiency of HPA.
Fig. 6 shows the BER performance of the system with pre-
distorter and without predistorter according to the several IBO
values (0, 3, 6, 9 dB) and the sub-carrier number of 64, which
parameter value is 0.5. When IBO is 0 dB, the system without
predisterter takes 2.5 dB SNR gain than the system with predis-
torter to meet . However, when IBO is 3 dB, the
system with predistorter takes 1 dB SNR gain than the system
without predistorter. We can find out the same trend like Fig. 5.
When parameter is changed into 2 and the other condi-
tions are the same as Figs. 58 are the BER results. In case of
dB, the system without predistorter gains the 1 dB
SNR than the system with prdistorter. But, in case of
dB, BER performances of both system are similar. That is,
effect of the predistorter becomes faded out as the linearity of
SSPA increases.
From the simulation results, we find the cross-over or
threshold IBO from which the system with predistorter shows
better BER performance than the one without predistorter.
Fig. 9 shows the cross-over IBO versus the sub-carrier number
(subcarrier number : 8, 16, 32, 64) according to values. The
cross-over IBO is not changed with the number of sub-carrier
428
Fig. 7. BER of SSPA and SSPA + predistorter (sub-carrier = 16, p = 2).
+ predistorter (sub-carrier = 64, p = 2).
Fig. 8. BER of SSPA and SSPA
because the power of the one OFDM symbol should be also
normalized to 1.0 independent of the number of sub-carrier
like as the equivalent SSPA model is normalized. However, it
shows obvious proportionality to the nonlinearity parameter
of SSPA because effect of the predistorter becomes faded out
as the linearity of SSPA increases.
IV. CONCLUSION
This paper studies BER performance variation according to
IBO values when the predistorter is used for the compensation
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BROADCASTING, VOL. 50, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2004
Fig. 9. Cross-over IBO versus the sub-carrier number.
for the HPA nonlinearity. In case of the SSPA of nonlinearity
parameter and dB, the system with predis-
torter is poorer than the one without predistorter. But this situa-
tion is inverted, if IBO is increased from 0 dB to 3 dB. So, we
can find that there is a threshold value of IBO for the predis-
torter to effectively compensate for the nonlinear SSPA when
the sub-carrier number and value are changed. The threshold
IBO is not changed with the number of sub-carrier because am-
plitude and distribution are normalized. However, it is propor-
tional to the nonlinearity parameter of SSPA because effect of
the predistorter becomes faded out as the linearity of SSPA in-
creases. The OFDM system with predistorter can be improved
only when thee IBO value is higher than the threshold value.
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