Pilot tone design with low peak-to-average power ratio in OFDM

In Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), the composite time signal exhibits a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). Due to non-linearities of the transmit power amplifiers, this high PAPR generates in-band distortion, out of band noise (OBN) or spectral spreading, which degrades the bit-error rate (BER) performance. In this paper, we propose a simple way to combat this problem without sacrificing channel estimation and frequency-offset tracking accuracy, by designing a sub-optimal configuration of the pilot tones. The effectiveness of the newly designed pilot tones in reducing PAPR is validated by Monte-Carlo simulations. The corresponding improvement in BER is also verified by simulations under IEEE 802.11 a standard settings, by using the channel with perfect CSI and the designed pilot-aided estimated channel for coherent detection.