Transmission of side information using pilot tones for OFDM systems over fading channels

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an attractive and effective technique for wireless communications. However, an OFDM signal has a large peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), which will cause serious nonlinear distortion especially when the signal passes through a nonlinear system. Adaptive symbol selection scheme (ASSS) is used to reduce the unwanted PAPR by selecting the adaptive OFDM signal with the smallest PAPR before transmitting. Because of the side information needed in ASSS, the effective data rate finally got in the receiver decreases. We develop a new modulation method using ASSS and channel estimation together, which can transmit the needed side information in the pilot tones made by channel estimation during the signal transmission. Our simulation results show that the method we proposed is a promising and valuable technique for reducing PAPR in OFDM signals.