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ICT Express 5 (2019) 202–205
www.elsevier.com/locate/icte

PAPR reduction of optical OFDM signals in visible light communications

Abbas Ali Sharifi
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Bonab, Bonab, Iran
Received 8 December 2018; accepted 23 January 2019
Available online 8 February 2019

Abstract
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is extensively used in optical communications to achieve high rate transmission. In this
paper, Vandermonde like matrix (VLM) pre-coding approach is offered to reduce the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of DC-biased
optical OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped optical OFDM (ACO-OFDM) signals in visible light communications. The proposed
method is compared with Walsh–Hadamard transform (WHT), discrete cosine transform (DCT), and discrete Hartley transform (DHT) pre-coding
approaches in terms of PAPR reduction performance. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method effectively reduces the PAPR of an
optical signal in both DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM techniques.
⃝c 2019 The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences (KICS). Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access
article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Keywords: PAPR; VLM; DCO-OFDM; ACO-OFDM

1. Introduction
Visible light communication (VLC) has been paid much
attention due to its ability to high-rate transmission [1]. Or-
thogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is generally
used to obtain high-speed transmission and it eliminates the
inter-symbol interference [2]. In the VLC systems, the OFDM
signal fluctuations are used to modulate the intensity of the light
emitting diode (LED). Thus, the bipolar OFDM signal should
be converted to a unipolar signal [1]. There are two types of
OFDM systems for optical communications: DC-biased opti-
cal OFDM (DCO-OFDM) and asymmetrically clipped optical
OFDM (ACO-OFDM) systems. In a DCO-OFDM system [3],
a DC bias is applied to the real optical OFDM (OOFDM)
signal to obtain the unipolar signal. In the ACO-OFDM sys-
tem [4], the even subcarriers are set to zeros and only the
odd subcarriers carry the data symbols. In this case, the signal
is clipped to zero to generate a positive signal. An OOFDM
signal, similar to an original OFDM signal, suffers from the
high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). As the effect of high
PAPR, an optical signal is clipped by the LED transmitter and
significant clipping distortion occurs. Many PAPR reduction
techniques have been suggested, including clipping and filter-
ing [5], selective mapping (SLM) [6], partial transmit sequence
E-mail address: sharifi@bonabu.ac.ir.
Peer review under responsibility of The Korean Institute of Communica-
tions and Information Sciences (KICS).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icte.2019.01.001
2405-9595/⃝ c 2019 The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences (KICS). Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article
under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
(PTS) [7], pre-coding [8], and post-coding [9]. In the clipping
technique, the signal amplitude is clipped to a predefined level
and consequently in-band distortion happens. Both SLM and
PTS techniques decrease the probability of the high PAPR.
They need to send side information for receiver, which de-
creases the bandwidth efficiency. Pre-coding and post-coding
approaches reduce the PAPR without corrupting the bit error
rate (BER) performance and without requiring side information
and additional processing. Some pre-coding approaches such
as Walsh–Hadamard transform (WHT) [10], discrete cosine
transform (DCT) [11], discrete Hartley transform (DHT) [12],
and Vandermonde like matrix (VLM) transform [13], have been
studied to decrease the high PAPR of an OFDM signal.
In this paper, the VLM pre-coding technique is proposed for
DCO-OFDM and ACO-OFDM signals. The presented method
is compared with the WHT, DCT, and DHT pre-coding tech-
niques in term of PAPR reduction performance. The obtained
results indicate that the proposed VLM pre-coding approach
is more efficient than the WHT, DCT, and DHT pre-coding
schemes.
The rest of the paper is prepared as follows: in Section 2, the
principle of an optical OFDM (OOFDM) system and definition
of the PAPR are presented. In Section 3, the VLM pre-
coding technique is investigated for DCO-OFDM and ACO-
OFDM systems. In this part, WHT, DCT, and DHT pre-coding
techniques are also described. In Section 4, simulation results
 A.A. Sharifi / ICT Express 5 (2019) 202–205 203

are discussed. Finally, concluding comments are presented in

Section 5.

2. OOFDM system model and PAPR

In an OOFDM system, the OFDM signal modulates the
optical intensity. Thus, it should be real and unipolar (positive).
To have a real OOFDM signal, the frequency-domain baseband
modulated symbols X=[X0 , X1 , . . . , X N −1 ]T is forced to have
Hermitian symmetry such as
X k = X ∗N −k 1 < k < N /2
(1)
X 0 = X N /2 = 0
The sequence X is applied to IFFT operation to generate the
time-domain symbols x=[x0 , x1 , . . . , x N −1 ]T . The n’th sample of
Fig. 1. DCO-OFDM system model with pre-coding.
a discrete-time transmitted OOFDM signal is given by:
N −1
1 ∑ 2π
xn = X k e j N kn ; 0≤n ≤ N −1 (2)
N k=0
where N is the number of IFFT points and Xk is k’th subcarrier.
A cyclic prefix (CP) is then added to each data block to avoid
inter-symbol and inter-carrier interferences. To create a positive
OOFDM signal, a DC bias is simply added to the signal. This Fig. 2. The ACO-OFDM transmitter system model with pre-coding.
unipolar signal generation scheme is called DCO-OFDM.
Another method, to create a positive signal, is ACO-OFDM.
In the ACO-OFDM, the even subcarriers are set to zeros such [s0 , s1 , . . ., s M−1 ]T . A pre-coder matrix transforms the vector S
that X=[0, X1 , 0, X3 , . . . , X N −1 ]T and only the odd subcarriers into a new vector X as X = P×S = [X0 , X1 , . . ., X M−1 ]T and P
carry data symbols. The elements of the vector X are also forced is the pre-coding matrix. The Hermitian symmetry is applied to
to have Hermitian symmetry. The resulting time-domain signal, the complex vector X, to generate a real-valued OFDM signal.
x, is real and has the antisymmetry property as
At the receiver side, the inverse pre-coding matrix is applied
xk = −xk+ N 0 < k < N /2 (3) after the FFT procedure. WHT, DCT, DHT, and VLM methods
2

Thus, the ACO-OFDM signal is clipped at zero to send the are four real transforms in which the data are multiplied by
positive part. Due to the anti-symmetry of x, clipping does not these transform matrices.
result in any loss of information. At the receiver, only the odd As shown in Fig. 2, the block diagram of the ACO-OFDM
subcarriers are demodulated. transmitter is similar to the DCO-OFDM transmitter, except
The mathematical relation of the PAPR for an OOFDM that in ACO-OFDM only the odd subcarriers carry the data
signal is the ratio of the maximum power to the average power symbols and the even subcarriers are set to zeros.
as:
In the WHT technique, a Hadamard matrix H N with ele-
max{|xn |2 }
PAPR = (4) ments 1 or -1 is used. The Hadamard matrix of 1, 2 and 2N
E|xn |2 orders are calculated as follows [10]:
where E{.} denotes the mathematical expectation. [ ]
The performance of PAPR reduction technique is often 1 1 1
H1 = [1] H2 = √
examined by complementary cumulative distribution function 2 1 −1
[ ] (6)
(CCDF). The CCDF is the probability that the PAPR of an 1 HN HN
OOFDM signal is greater than the given threshold PAPR0 as: H2N = √
2N HN −HN
where–H N is complementary of H N .
CCDF = P(PAPR > PAPR0 ) = 1 − (1 − e−PAPR0 ) N (5) In the DCT scheme, each element of matrix P of size
N×N in the m’th row and n’th column can be obtained by the
3. The proposed pre-coding scheme
following equation [11],
The PAPR of an OOFDM signal can be reduced by an {
1
⎧
appropriate pre-coding scheme. Fig. 1 displays a DCO-OFDM m=0
⎪
⎪ √
system based on a pre-coding scheme.
⎨
N 0≤n ≤ N −1
pmn = (7)
π
{
The input binary data is mapped to a digital modulator ⎪ 1 1≤m ≤ N −1
⎩ √ cos( (n + 0.5)m)
⎪
(i.e., 16-QAM) to generate the new complex symbols S = N N 0≤n ≤ N −1
204 A.A. Sharifi / ICT Express 5 (2019) 202–205

Fig. 3. The PAPR performance of DCO-OOFDM approach. Fig. 4. The PAPR performance of ACO-OOFDM method.

Table 1
In DHT technique, each element of the DHT matrix P in the PAPR comparison in CCDF = 10−3 .
m’th row and n’th column pmn is defined as follows [12]: Pre-coding method PAPR (dB) PAPR (dB)
DCO-OFDM ACO-OFDM
1 2π 2π
pmn = √ [cos( mn) + sin( mn)] Original OOFDM 13.21 12.85
N N N (8) WHT-OOFDM 12.67 11.92
0 ≤ m, n ≤ N − 1 DCT-OOFDM 11.66 10.96
The Vandermonde matrix can be created by the monomials DHT-OOFDM 12.22 11.58

1, x, x2 , . . . , xn at the given nodes. By replacing the polynomials The proposed VLM-OOFDM 11.34 9.96
p0 (x), p1 (x), . . . , pn (x) instead of monomials, a VLM is gener-
ated. There are two forms of VLMs which can be created as
follows [13]: The PAPR performance of the proposed VLM approach for
the ACO-OFDM system is displayed in Fig. 4. It is easy to
π
√
(1) 2 observe that the results are similar to the results in Fig. 3.
pmn = cos( (m − 1)(n − 1))
N +1 N −1 At CCDF=10−3 , the PAPR of the proposed VLM pre-coding
(9)
π
√
(2) 2 scheme is about 3dB less than the original OOFDM signal and
pmn = cos( (m − 1)(n − 1/2))
N +1 N −1 1dB less than the DCT pre-coding scheme.
where 0≤m, n≤N − 1. The PAPR values of original OOFDM, WHT, DCT, DHT,
Both of the above matrices have the same PAPR reduction and the proposed VLM approaches are summarized in Table 1.
performance. So, only the first type of VLM transform is chosen
for simulations. 5. Conclusions
In this paper, we proposed a new Vandermonde like matrix
4. Simulation results and discussions (VLM) pre-coding approach for PAPR reduction of optical
OFDM signals in visible light communication systems. The
The performance of the proposed VLM pre-coding approach proposed method was compared with the WHT, DCT, and DHT
is investigated in term of PAPR reduction. Simulations are pre-coding approaches in term of PAPR reduction performance.
performed using MATLAB software for 105 frames of 16-QAM Simulation results indicate that the proposed VLM pre-coding
symbols. The PAPR reduction performance is evaluated using scheme outperforms the WHT, DCT, and DHT pre-coding
the CCDF of the PAPR. The number of subcarriers is assumed schemes and it reduces the high PAPR of both DCO-OFDM
to be M = 128 and N = 256 points IFFT is used. and ACO-OFDM signals.
Fig. 3 shows the CCDF of the PAPR for original OOFDM
(without PAPR reduction), WHT, DCT, DHT, and the proposed Conflict of interest
VLM pre-coding schemes for a DCO-OFDM system. As shown
in the figure, the PAPR performance of VLM scheme outper- The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
forms the conventional OOFDM signal, WHT, DCT, and DHT
pre-coding approaches. When CCDF=10−3 , the PAPR of VLM References
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