Design and Implementation of a Constant Envelope OFDM Waveform in a Software-Defined Radio Platform

Abstract

This thesis examines the high peak-to-average-power ratio (PAPR) problem of OFDM and other spectrally-efficient multicarrier modulation schemes, specifically their stringent requirements for highly linear, power-inefficient amplification. The thesis then presents a most intriguing answer to the PAPR-problem in the form of a constant-envelope OFDM (CE-OFDM) waveform, a waveform which employs phase modulation to transform the high-PAPR OFDM signal into a constant envelope signal, like FSK or GMSK, which can be amplified with non-linear power amplifiers at near saturation levels of efficiency. A brief analytical description of CE-OFDM and its suboptimal receiver architecture is provided in order to define and analyze the key parameters of the waveform and their performance impacts. The primary contribution of this thesis is a highly tunable software-defined radio (SDR) implementation of the waveform which enables rapid-prototyping and testing of CE-OFDM systems. The digital baseband processing of the waveform is executed on a general purpose processor (GPP) in the Linux Ubuntu 14.04 operating system, and programmed using the GNU Radio SDR software framework with a mixture of Python and C++ routines. A detailed description of the software implementation is provided, and baseband simulations of the SDR CE-OFDM receiver in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) validate the performance of the implemented signal processing. A fully-functional CE-OFDM radio system is proposed in which GPPs executing the software defined transmitter and receiver routines are interfaced with Ettus Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) transceiver front ends. A software testbench is created to enable rapid configuration and testing of the CE-OFDM waveform over all permutations of its parameters, over both simulated and physical RF channels, to draw deeper insights into the characteristics of the waveform and the necessary design considerations and improvements for further development and deployment of CE-OFDM systems.