Performance Analysis of OFDM Systems with Selected Mapping in the Presence of Nonlinearity

In the presence of nonlinearity, we analyze the impact of the selected mapping (SLM) technique on bit-error-rate (BER) performance of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems in an additive white Gaussian noise channel. The peak-to-average-ratio (PAR) reduction gain of SLM can be increased by improving the PAR statistics at the cost of complexity in the OFDM transmitter, thereby helping to decrease the required power amplifier (PA) output backoff (OBO). However, since the PAR statistics focus only on the statistical distribution of the highest peak in an OFDM symbol, the statistics cannot be used to quantify BER performance degradation in the presence of nonlinearity such as that caused by a PA or digital-to-analog converter (DAC). We first derive a closed-form expression for the envelope power distribution in an OFDM system with SLM. Then, using this derived envelope power distribution, we investigate the BER performance and the total degradation (TD) of OFDM systems with SLM under the existence of nonlinearity. We discuss peak backoff (PBO) and the clipping ratio, which determine the operating point of the PA and dynamic range of the DAC, respectively. Lastly, we consider the total degradation (TD), which indicates the tradeoff between the OBO and the Eb/No penalty due to nonlinearity, and numerically compute the PBO and clipping ratio that minimize the TD. The TD-minimizing PBO and clipping ratio are given as functions of the number of candidate signals in SLM.