Power amplifier distortion effects on single-carrier and multiple-carrier waveforms

Power Amplifiers (PAs) are typically used to convert low-power Radio Frequency (RF) signals into high-power RF signals. Most wireless communications systems employ power amplifiers in order to increase the operating range of the system. However, this conversion process can have some undesired effects on the underlying physical layer waveforms which are used to communicate the digital information. This paper will investigate the effects of power amplifiers on the two most popular waveform design techniques used for the transmission of digital data over wireless channels: single-carrier and multi-carrier. Of main interest will be the effects caused by PAs to each waveform's out-of-band emissions, average and peak transmit power, received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Bit Error Rate (BER) performance.