Constant envelope FrFT OFDM: Spectral and energy efficiency analysis

Abstract

Constant envelope with a fractional Fourier transformorthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CE-FrFT-OFDM) is a special case of a constant envelope OFDM (CE-OFDM), both being energy efficient wireless communication techniques with a 0 dB peak to average power ratio (PAPR). However, with the proper selection of fractional order, the first technique has a high bit error rate (BER) performance in the frequency-time selective channels. This paper performs further analysis of CE-FrFT-OFDM by examining its spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) and compare to the famous OFDM and FrFT-OFDM techniques. Analytical and comprehensive simulations conducted show that, the CE-FrFT-OFDM has five times the EE of OFDM and FrFT-OFDM systems with a slightly less SE. Increasing CE-FrFT-OFDM's transmission power by increasing its amplitude to 1.7 increases its SE to match that of the OFDM and FrFT-OFDM systems while slightly reducing its EE by 20% to be four times that of OFDM and FrFTOFDM systems. OFDM and FrFT-OFDM's amplitude fluctuations cause rapid changing output back-off (OBO) power requirements and further reduce power amplifier (PA) efficiency while CE-FrFTOFDM stable operational linear range makes it a better candidate and outperforms the other techniques when their OBO exceeds 1.7. Higher EE and low BER in time-frequency selective channel are attracting features for CE-FrFT-OFDM deployment in mobile devices.