PAPR Reduction in OFDM Using Wavelet Packet
Pre-processing
Mohan Baro and Jacek Ilow
Dalhousie University
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Halifax, NS, Canada
Email: {mbaro, j.ilow}@dal.ca
Abstract— This paper introduces a novel peak-to-average
power ratio (PAPR) reduction method in orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM) systems by deploying wavelet
packet pre-processing of the quadrature amplitude modulation
(QAM) symbols. Specifically, joint inverse discrete wavelet packet
and Fourier transformations (IDWPT and IDFT) of QAM
symbols are calculated at the transmitter with the purpose of
minimizing the PAPR of the OFDM frame to be transmitted.
The wavelet packet tree representing a reversible IDWPT chosen
at the transmitter is communicated to the receiver as side
information, where the output of the DFT block is passed through
the DWPT to recover the QAM symbols. As the DWPT is a
orthonormal transformation, the proposed method preserves the
average transmitted energy while maintaining the integrity of the
transmitted information. With a small level of redundancy for
side information, the proposed scheme achieves 5.5 dB reduction
in PAPR over the traditional OFDM system as measured using
the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of
the OFDM signals at the clipping probability of 10−4 .
I. I NTRODUCTION
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has
emerged as an efficient multicarrier modulation scheme for
wireless, frequency selective, communication channels. Ease
of implementation, high spectral efficiency, resilience to im-
pulse noise and multipath are a few advantages of OFDM
systems. However, a major drawback in the OFDM signal is
its large envelope fluctuation, which limits the efficiency of
the non-linear power amplifiers specific to wireless commu-
nications by forcing them to operate at lower average power.
This phenomenon is quantified by the peak-to-average power
ratio (PAPR) and results from the superposition of a large
number of usually statistically independent subchannels that
can constructively sum up to high peaks. Also, from central
limit theorem, this causes the OFDM signal to have complex
Gaussian process behavior and the envelope to be Rayleigh
distributed.
Various schemes have been developed to reduce high PAPR
in OFDM signals [1], [2]. For the purposes of this paper, we
classify them here as distortion and distortion-less methods.
The first class of methods, in general, introduces an acceptable
level of in-channel distortions resulting in an increased, irre-
ducible, symbol error rate at the receiver. The latter methods,
pursued in this paper, allow perfect recovery of the original
data at the expense of transmitting side information resulting
in a reduced throughput. Among the distortion-less PAPR
195
1-4244-1457-1/08/$25.00 © IEEE
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE CCNC 2008 proceedings.
reduction schemes, Discrete Parameter Optimization methods
such as Selective Mapping (SLM) or variants of Multiple
Signal Representations including Tone Injection are closest to
the PAPR reduction methods developed in this paper [1], [2].
They are all based on adding time dependent blocks to
the original OFDM frame to reduce its peak by changing
some or all subcarriers (tones) in the frequency domain. The
discrete parameter optimization PAPR reduction methods are
formulated as a solution to:

 
smin = min P AP R IDFT T s (X) , s = 1, · · · , M (1)
s
where T s (·) represents a reversible transformation of the
multicarrier frequency-domain vector of QAM symbols X,
and M is the number of possible transformations of X. The
problem setup in (1) stresses that the vector output of T s (·)
is further processed through the IDFT of the conventional
OFDM transmitter. The index smin represents the T s (X) and
the modified QAM symbols, resulting in the minimum PAPR
and thus chosen for transmission. To recover the QAM data,
the transmitter sends as side information smin , introducing
log2 (M ) bits of overhead per one OFDM frame. Without af-
fecting the bit error rate performance, a number of researchers
have independently proposed transformations, referred to as
SLM, based on phase shifts of the data symbols. In this kind
of method, it is of great interest not only to find a computa-
tionally efficient transformation T s (·), but also to have a small
number of these transformations whose application achieves a
significant PAPR reduction for any given OFDM frame.
The basic idea in the PAPR reduction method proposed
in this paper is to apply in (1) an IDWPT as a transfor-
mation T s (·) . With some modifications this technique does
not destroy the multicarrier character of the OFDM signal.
In [3], a specialized PAPR reduction scheme for Wavelet
Packet Modulation (WPM) was introduced for a problem setup
similar to that in (1) except for a lack of IDFT block. In
this paper, a PAPR reduction using the wavelet packet tree
pruning (WPTP) technique is developed for PAPR problems in
OFDM transmissions. The motivation for this approach is that
the calculation of the time domain output of the IDWPT and
IDFT cascade can performed by simple element-by-element
multiplications of QAM symbols and frequency responses of
cascaded filter banks.

II. BACKGROUND
A. OFDM Signal
In the baseband-equivalent OFDM transmitter with N sub-
carriers, N modulation symbols, X[k] k = 0, 1, · · · , N − 1,
are mapped over the time interval [0, T ] on to the continuous
time OFDM signal, x(t), with its discrete time version x[n]
referred to as the OFDM frame:
N −1
1 
x[n] = X[k]ej2πkn/N
N communication terminology, the usage of IDWPT and DWPT
k=0
where n=0, ..., N−1, and x(t) is sampled at the Nyquist rate T1 .
In (2), the OFDM symbols x[n] are related to X[k]’s through
an IDFT and when N is power of two, they are calculated us-
ing the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT). The modulation
symbols X[k] are usually QAM symbols or, as it is the case
in this paper, pre-processed QAM symbols with the objective
of minimizing the PAPR of the transmitted OFDM frame.
The continuous PAPR, PAPRc , of x(t) is the ratio of the
maximum instantaneous power to the average power. The
discrete PAPR of x[m], upsampled version of x(t), denoted
by PAPR is calculated as:
2
|x[m]|
PAPR = max  
0≤m<up·N −1 2
E |x[m]|
where E(·) is the expectation operator and up is the upsam-
pling factor over the Nyquist rate. The PAPR of an over
sampled version of x(t) calculated as in (3) provides an
accurate approximation of the PAPRc provided that the over
sampling factor up is at least four. In this paper, up = 4 is
used when deciding on the transformation used to construct
the signal going into the channel.
B. Wavelet Packet Transform
Wavelet packets are a class of generalized Fourier trans-
forms with basis functions localizing well in both time and fre-
quency domains. They are constructed using quadrature mirror
filter (QMF) pairs h(n) and g(n), satisfying some conditions
leading usually to h(n) and g(n) being low- and high-pass
filters, respectively [4], [5]. The QMFs h(n) and g(n) of length
L are recursively used to define the sequence of basis functions
ϕn (t), called wavelet packets, which satisfy various orthogo-
nality properties useful in calculating the discrete WPT. The
latter takes at its input N numbers and produces N numbers at
the output, similarly to an DFT operation. The IDWPT can be
viewed as a synthesis operation representing the data symbols
as a sum of shifted ϕj [k] waveforms. An alternate way to
visualize wavelet packet transforms is by defining a set of
operators (H −1 , G−1 , H and G) based on h(n) and g(n) as
follows [4]:
 III. S ELECTED M APPING USING WAVELET PACKET T REE
H{x}(2n) = x(k)h(k − 2n) (4)
kεZ

G{x}(2n) = x(k)g(k − 2n)
kεZ
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE CCNC 2008 proceedings.

H −1 {x}(n) = x(k)h(n − 2k) (6)
kεZ

G−1 {x}(n) = x(k)g(n − 2k) (7)
kεZ
Symbol sequences processed by the IDWPT can now be
represented by discrete-time signals that are built by successive
iterations of H −1 and G−1 operators. At the receiver, a DWPT
is used to recover the original transmitted symbols deploying
(2) inverse operations represented by H and G. In the digital
is equivalent to transmit and matched filtering, respectively [6].
The IDWPT and DWPT operations are usually represented
by a wavelet packet tree as shown in Fig. 1. The nodes of
(3)
Fig. 1. Wavelet packet trees : (a) IDWPT (synthesis/modulation) Tree and
(b) DPWT (analysis/demodulation) Tree.
wavelet packet tree T (D) are represented as a pair (−l, p)
where l, (l =< D) is current depth or level of node in the tree
of depth D, and p is position of the node at the level. Thus
an unpruned tree of depth D will have the following nodes:
∇(T D ) = {(0, 0),
(−1, 0), (−1, 1),
(−2, 0), .., (−2, 3),
(−(D − 1), 0), .., (−(D − 1), 2(D−1) − 1),
(−D, 0), .., (−D, 2D − 1)} (8)
where {(−D, 0), .., (−D, 2D −1)} = ∇l (T D ) are the leaf (ter-
minal) nodes and {(0, 0), .., (−D, 2(D−1) − 1)} = ∇nl (T D )
are the non-leaf (non-terminal) nodes of the binary tree.
Pruning involves the reconfiguration of a wavelet packet tree
by selective joining or splitting of appropriate nodes of a tree.

A node join operation, (T, n) reconfigures a binary tree, T ,
by converting a non-leaf node n into a leaf node. The child
nodes (and sub-trees) of n are reconstituted into node n. A
node split operation, (T, n) reconfigures a binary tree T by
converting a leaf node n into two child nodes which are also
leaf nodes. In this paper, pruned trees are created by joining
of one or more non-leaf nodes in ∇nl (T D ) of a tree T (D) .
P RUNING
In this section a OFDM PAPR reduction technique utilizing
(5) wavelet packet tree pruning (WPTP) is presented. This tech-
nique was originally proposed for PAPR reduction in wavelet
196

packet modulation [3]. This technique is similar to selective
mapping (SLM) [1], [2] for OFDM where a large set of
statistically independent signals are generated from the same
information and the signal with the lowest PAPR is selected
for transmission.
Fig. 2 shows a OFDM communication system with a
wavelet packet tree pruning (WPTP) block for PAPR reduc-
tion. The transmitter has a WPTP block, which is the prunable
version of the IDWPT (synthesis) tree shown in Fig.1a.
and is represented by Fig. 3a. Its corresponding prunable
DWPT(analysis) block is present at the receiver and is repre-
sented by Fig. 3b. Encoded or modulated data, X m is input to
a wavelet packet tree, the tree is iteratively pruned to generate
alternative sequences, Am , which are then passed through an
IDFT block. A peak acceptor then determines which output
sequence, sm , to transmit. If the sequence, sm , achieves a low
PAPR (global minimum) or if the PAPR is below a certain
threshold, P AP Rth , it is selected for transmission, otherwise
new sequences are generated until a sequence with low PAPR
is found or all pruned trees are searched.
Fig. 2. OFDM system with wavelet packet tree pruning.
Fig. 3. One sided WPTP blocks. (a) Transmitter Pruning (b) Receiver
Pruning.
The transformation performed by the pruning operation is
reversible. At the receiver using information sent by the trans-
mitter about the pruned tree, the corresponding WPTP receiver
block (Fig. 3b.) is used to recover the original information
transmitted. The DWPT in the receiver WPTP block is pruned
identical to the DWPT in the transmitter WPTP block, together
forming a perfect reconstruction structure.
In the PAPR reduction algorithm of [3], a single node in
∇nl (T D ) was joined to provide a PAPR reduction. In this
paper, a multi node join procedure is utilized. Fig. 4 shows a
unpruned tree, T (6) of depth D = 6. A number of pruned
trees (or sub-trees) can generated from the unpruned tree
197
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE CCNC 2008 proceedings.

(T (6) ) using successive node join, (T (D) , n), operations as
described earlier.
Fig. 4. Full wavelet packet tree of depth=6.
The multi-node join procedure for PAPR reduction starts
with an unpruned wavelet packet tree T (6) , which is iteratively
pruned using an allowable set of nodes P = ∇nl (T (6) ) E (6)
for a search of a tree which achieves the lowest PAPR. The
exclusion set E (6) contains the set of nodes for which are not
allowed to be joined. The E set can be used restrict certain
sub-trees from being used in the PAPR reduction procedure.
For each iteration i <= N , starting with a unpruned tree,
Ti = T (6) , the PAPR, ρn is calculated for the output xm n of the
IFFT for each pruned tree, Tin formed by joining each node,
n ∈ Pi . The pruned tree with the minimum PAPR ρnmin
is stored as Ti+1 = Tinmin for the next iteration. In each
iteration Ti is successively pruned. The allowable set Pi+1 for
the next iteration is recalculated based on starting tree Ti+1 for
the next iteration as Pi+1 = ∇nl (Ti+1 )  E (6) . Finally, after
all N iterations have been complete, the output of the pruned
tree which achieves the minimum PAPR of all pruned trees
is selected for transmission. Information about which pruned
tree achieved the minimum PAPR is also transmitted as side
information.
In the tree T (6) all nodes in ∇nl (T 6 ) may be used for
pruning, however, the pruning set nodes are limited to the
following:
PA = {(−5, 0), (−5, 1), ..., (−5, 31)} (9)
PB = {(−3, 0), (−3, 1), ..., (−3, 7),
(−4, 0), (−4, 1), ..., (−4, 15),
(−5, 0), (−5, 1), ..., (−5, 31)} (10)
Note that the exclusion set E, dictates where on the original
tree pruning should occur. The E set can be modified to obtain
allowable sets P A and P B .

A node join operation (Ti , n) with n ∈ Pi reconfigures
the tree Ti . The node join operation will delete the child nodes
and sub-trees of node n. The set of child nodes and nodes of
sub-trees of a node n = (−l, p), defined by C (−l,p) are all
reconstituted to form a new leaf node at node n. Thus in the
multi-join algorithm Pi must be recalculated after each join
 8
At the transmitter, the output of the two sided WPTP block,
OFDM (Unoptimized) X can visualized as a scatter pattern as shown in Figs. 7. It was
WPTP (Optimized)
7 be observed that pruning of the wavelet packet tree generates
alternative signalling points for the same data sequence input
6
similar the well known TI scheme [2], [7]. In the iterative tree
5 pruning process, data points are assigned to these signalling
Peak Level

points such that the PAPR of the output signal is minimized.

4
Fig. 7 shows the optimized output after termination of the
3

6
2 Unpruned WP Tree
Pruned WP Tree
1 4

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 2
Time Index

Quadrature
0
Fig. 5. Peak reduction using wavelet packet tree pruning.
−2
as many nodes and sub-trees are affected by a join operation.
Pi is recalculated after each join as follows:
−4
(−l,p)
Pi+1 = Pi  C (11)
−6
−6 −4 −2 0 2 4 6
where  is the set difference operation. For example, for

In−Phase

(T (6) , n) with the allowable set P B , and pruning node

n = (−4, 0),
C (−4,0)={(−5, 0),(−5, 1),(−6, 0),(−6, 1),(−6, 2),(−6, 3)} (12)
This joining operation prunes the tree and reduces the allow-
able set P B to the following:


PB = P B  C (−4,0)

The new locations of the alternative signalling points are
PB = {(−3, 0), (−3, 1), ..., (−3, 7),
(−4, 0), (−4, 1), ..., (−4, 15),
(−5, 2), ..., (−5, 31)}
Fig. 5 shows the time domain envelope of the outputs,
xm , of the IFFT block using the full (unpruned) tree and
the optimum pruned tree after the application of the WPTP
algorithm with the latter exhibiting reduced peaks.
Another variation of PAPR reduction algorithm using WPTP
is developed by observing that the tree pruning operation
modifies the signalling points in the frequency domain. This is
similar to tone injection or constellation extension methods of
PAPR reduction for OFDM [2]. This is clearly evident when
the original one sided WPTP pruning block of Fig. 3a. is
replaced with a two sided WPTP block shown in Fig. 6a.
Fig. 6. Two sided WPTP blocks. (a) Transmitter Pruning (b) Receiver Pruning
Fig. 7. Optimum reconfiguration data onto alternate signalling points.
WPTP algorithm involving node joins at different depths of
the tree. Each node join operation, modifies the original QAM-
16 scatter pattern by introducing new signalling points. Some
of the original data signalling points occupy the new signalling
points. In some cases the original QAM signalling points
(13) are not used for the representation of the input sequence.
observed to be scaled versions of the original signalling points
{(−3, −3), (−3, −1), ..., (1, 1), (1, 3), (3, 3)} of the QAM-16
(14) constellation with the scaling factor depending on the depth
and position of the joined node, n = (−l, p). The scaling
factor is also dependent on the filters h(n) and g(n) which
are used in the construct of the wavelet packet tree, for the√
Haar (Daub-1) wavelet the scaling factor are multiples of ±2 2
for both the quadrature and imaginary axes. At the transmitter,
only the IDWPT tree of the two sided WPTP block is pruned.
The DWPT tree is an unpruned tree of the same depth (D).
However, the depth of the DWPT can theoretically be any
value less than D. At the receiver the corresponding two sided
WPTP block (Fig. 6a.) is present, however the only the DWPT
is pruned to recover the transmitted sequence. The tree pruning
procedure is the same as int the one sided WPTP algorithm
with the only difference being that the pruned tree is now a
part of a two sided WPTP block.
IV. O PTIMIZATION FOR L OWER C OMPLEXITY AND
A MOUNT OF S IDE I NFORMATION
The number of iterations in the algorithm does have not be
large. From the analysis of PAPR reduction versus the number
of iteration it was observed that at most times minimum tree
was found within 5 or less iterations. Note that the number

198

This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE CCNC 2008 proceedings.
of iterations is dependent on which nodes in allowable set
P are joined during previous iterations. With each node join
removing the joined node and its subtrees from the set P .
Therefore, the size of P reduces rapidly after each iteration.
Thus number of iterations or passes can be set to N = 5 to
reduce the processing delay. The loop controlling the number
of iterations can also be optimized by setting a desired PAPR
threshold value, P AP Rth . In this scheme the search procedure
stops as soon as one of iterations finds a pruned tree with a
PAPR below P AP Rth . This reduces the number of IDWTs
which have to be calculated; however, it offers slightly lower
PAPR reduction performance.
Another area of optimization is in the DWPT/IDWPT
operations themselves. Through the recursive application of
the Noble identities it is possible to reduce the number of
filters and samplers required in the WPM system. Noble
identities provide the means in (4-7) to interchange the order
of operation of the filters and sampler and thus allow for
the grouping and combining of multiple filters and samplers
of a wavelet packet tree. Noble identities can be used to
reduce multiple filters and samplers to one of each per data
carrier [5]. The information about which pruned tree was
used to obtain the reduced PAPR needs to be transmitted
to the receiver as side information, I. The receiver uses this
information to reconstruct the pruned tree for demodulation.
The number of possible pruned trees, M , and thus maximum
number of transformation, T s (·) in (1), affect the amount of
side information [3]. The lowering of the size of the allowable
set P leads to the reduction in the number of pruned trees and
thus the amount of the side information to be transmitted.
Furthermore, the exclusion set E can further reduce the size
of P by disallowing certain subtrees from being pruned in the
algorithm.
The size of the index id used to represent the pruned trees
is given by:
I = log2 (Size(P ) × N ) bits (15)
where P is the allowable set and N is the maximum number
of iterations used in the search for the pruned wavelet packet
tree that achieves the minimum PAPR.
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Simulations were conducted to verify the performance of the
proposed PAPR reduction schemes using WPTP. In this paper,
the performance of the proposed PAPR reduction schemes are
demonstrated through the complementary cumulative distribu-
tion function (CCDF) of PAPR, which is a performance metric
independent of the transmitter amplifier. Given the reference
level P AP R0 > 0, the probability of a PAPR being higher
than the reference value is the CCDF and is expressed as
follows [2]:
CCDF (P AP R0 ) = P r{P AP R > P AP R0 } (16)
For practical reasons, the CCDF of PAPR is calculated based
on the percentage of the OFDM/WPM frames for which
PAPR exceeds the threshold P AP R0 . The simulations were
199
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE CCNC 2008 proceedings.
0
10
OFDM64−Ref
WPTP (5)
WPTP (2,3,4,5)
WPTP D(5)
−1 WPTP D(2,3,4,5)
10
TI − Ref
Pr(PAPR>PAPR )
0
−2
10
−3
10
−4
10
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
PAPR0 (dB)
Fig. 8. CCDF Results.
carried out for OFDM with 64 subcarriers using a QAM-16
modulation. The Haar (Daub-1) wavelet packet bases were
used to construct the wavelet packet trees. A raised cosine
filter of α = 0.1 with a upsampling factor of 5 was used at the
transmitter. The CCDF results are are shown in Fig. 8. In this
figure, the performance curves WPTP(5) and WPTP(2, 3, 4, 5)
refer to the application of the allowable sets P A and P B ,
respectively. The figure also includes the performance curve
for alternative signalling point scheme, WPTP D(5) and WPTP
D(2, 3, 4, 5) also utilizing the allowable sets P A and P B ,
respectively. Fig. 8 demonstrates the performance gains are
in the range of 3.5dB and 5.5dB over the original OFDM
signal. CCDF plot of PAPR reduction using the Tone Injection
(TI) method is also included as reference. The simulations
using the larger allowable set P B performed better in both
schemes. The larger allowable set P B provides more degrees
of freedom in the creation of pruned trees, however, its larger
size also increases the amount of redundant side information,
I, transmitted to the receiver.
R EFERENCES
[1] M. Breiling, S. H. Müller, and J. B. Huber, “SLM peak power reduction
without explicit side information,” IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 5, no. 6, pp.
239–241, 2001.
[2] J. Tellado, Multicarrier Modulation with Low PAR. Applications to DSL
and Wireless. New York: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
[3] M. Baro and J. Ilow, “PAPR reduction in wavelet packet modulation
using tree pruning,” in 2007 IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference
VTC2007-Spring, Dublin, Ireland, Apr. 2007.
[4] A. R. Lindsey, “Wavelet packet modulation: a generalized method for
orthogonally multiplexed communications,” in IEEE 27th Southeastern
Symposium on System Theory, 1995, pp. 392–396.
[5] D. Daly, C. Heneghan, A. Fagan, and M. Vetterli, “Optimal wavelet packet
modulation under finite complexity constraint,” in Proc. ICASP, vol. 3,
2002, pp. 2789–2792.
[6] A. Jamin and P. Mähönen, “Wavelet packet based modulation for wire-
less communications,” Wiley Wireless Communications and Networking
Journal, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 123–137, Mar. 2005.
[7] A. Jayalath and C. Athaudage, “On the PAR reduction of OFDM signals
using multiple signal representation,” IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 8, no. 7,
pp. 425–427, 2004.