Evaluation and optimiztion of DRC-based PAPR-reduction within the DVB-T2 Common Simulation Platform

Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a spectrally efficient multicarrier modulation scheme, which is employed in the most advanced high-speed wireless communication systems, such as Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) or Long-Term Evolution (LTE). However, one of its biggest shortcomings is that it produces a signal with a high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR), which is undesirable for several reasons. This issue has been subject to a lot of research effort over the last decades. Several solutions have been proposed in the past [2, 3]. More recently, a different approach borrowed from audio signal processing was presented [1]. In a pilot experiment, the authors were able to demonsrtate its applicability to a noise-free communication channel. The main purpose of the cited pilot experiment was to showcase that Dynamic Range Compression (DRC), if properly parametrized, can also be applied to OFDM signals, which unlike highly correlated audio signals posses a spectrum similar to white noise.