Optimal Power Encoding of OFDM Signals in All-Digital Transmitters

In this paper, we propose a power encoding method for converting a high-resolution OFDM baseband signal into a signal that assumes only a finite number of values. This is achieved by the series interconnection of, optimally (co)designed, delta-sigma (Delta EM) and digital pulse-width modulators (DPWM). Given an input signal class with a known amplitude distribution (e.g., OFDM), parameters of the multilevel DPWM are designed such that the mean squared error of the inherent DPWM quantization noise is minimized Parameters of the Delta EM are then chosen with respect to the designed DPWM, so to optimally shape the inherent quantization noise out of the spectral band of interest. The superior performance of the proposed novel power encoding scheme is demonstrated by Matlab simulations on several standardized LTE test signals.