Envelope variations and spectral splatter in clipped multicarrier signals

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation into the effects of clipping of both baseband and bandpass multicarrier signals. It will be shown that considerable reductions in the amplitude variations (crest factor) of both classes of signal are possible at the expense of limited inband spectral distortion and some out of band clip noise emissions. The amount of inband distortion and out of band emissions can be traded off directly against reductions in the crest factor of the clipped signal. Novel clipping techniques are presented which give one more control over the various trade-offs.