Tradeoff of spectral and energy efficiencies: Impact of power amplifier on OFDM systems

Spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) are key measures for wireless communication systems. In OFDM systems, the non-linear effects and inefficiencies of power amplifiers (PAs) have posed practical challenges for system design. In this paper, we analyze the impact of the PA on the SE and EE tradeoff of OFDM systems. We also propose a PA switching technique which achieves a better SE-EE tradeoff, e.g., the EE can be improved by 323% with 15% SE reduction.