Partial response signaling for enhanced spectral efficiency and RF performance in OFDM systems

Abstract

An OFDM system traditionally modulates each orthogonal subcarrier with a single data sample. We introduce a new method of partial response (PR) signaling where each data sample is spread over multiple subcarriers. The deliberately introduced dispersion in frequency can help compress the signal in time leading to significant time and/or bandwidth gains. We evaluate the performance of a PR signaled OFDM system in Rayleigh fading channels. We show that PR-OFDM can give spectral efficiency gains of up to 40% and mitigate peak-to-average power ratio by up to 5 dB.