Analysis and Design of Multi-Tone Signal Generation Algorithms for Reducing Crest Factor

This paper describes the similarity of the crest factor reduction effect among the four algorithms (Newman, Kitayoshi, Schroeder and Narahashi) and unifies their initial phase setting equations using the derivation of the Narahashi phase. When testing the frequency characteristics of analog/mixed-signal ICs, a multi-tone (sum of multiple sine waves) signal is often used instead of a single tone signal, to reduce their testing time. However, as the amplitude of each tone signal becomes smaller if multiple sine waves are simply added without care of their initial phases, the SNR of the test result becomes worse and the test accuracy becomes lower. To alleviate this problem, it is necessary to generate a multi-tone signal using a crest factor reduction algorithm. There are four representative multi-tone signal generation algorithms for reducing crest factor, and their study results are presented.