Effects of amplitude clipping on signal-to-noise ratio and spectral splatter of multicarrier DS-CDMA

Multicarrier direct sequence code-division multiple access (MC-DS-CDMA) has been adopted as one of the proposals in IMT-2000. A main disadvantage of multicarrier modulation is that it exhibits a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). This paper investigates the effects of amplitude clipping on multicarrier DS-CDMA signals. It is shown that considerable reductions of PAPR are possible at the expense of limited inband spectral distortion and out-of-band clip noise emissions. The amount of inband distortion can be explained as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). With PAPR decreasing, SNR abates. A trade-off point is chosen.