DFT-Spread OTFS Communication System with the Reductions of PAPR and Nonlinear Degradation

The orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) system with two-dimensional (2-D) modulation technique is an attractive technology to show the better performance than the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, particularly in the high-speed vehicle communications and high-level dimensions of multiple-input multiple-output systems. However, the OTFS system has high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), like OFDM system. In this paper, we analyze the PAPR characteristics of the OTFS signal and propose a concept of discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-Spread OTFS system to reduce the PAPR efficiently. The key idea of the DFT precoding technique is to spread the energy of a subcarrier throughout the subcarriers. Therefore, the PAPR is decreased. In the practical wireless communication systems, the power efficiency could become worse, or the bit error rate (BER) is seriously degraded by the high peak signal power in a high power amplifier (HPA). So, by reducing the PAPR, the efficiency of the HPA can be significantly improved and the nonlinear distortion caused by HPA can be decreased, too. We evaluate the spectrum characteristics of conventional OFDM and OTFS schemes and the proposed DFT-Spread OTFS scheme according to the different nonlinear conditions of HPA. Simulation results demonstrate that the power spectrums of the proposed system are less sensitive than the conventional schemes in HPA nonlinear environments. In addition, we compare the uncoded BER performance among the different schemes over the AWGN and delay-Doppler channels according to the several HPA nonlinear conditions for the different mobility speeds of user equipment. The BER performance of the conventional OFDM system breaks down completely in high-mobility scenarios for both HPA linear and nonlinear conditions. The proposed scheme improves the BER performance over AWGN and delay-Doppler channels in HPA nonlinear environments, as compared to the conventional OTFS system. In high-mobility scenarios and at BER of $$1 \times 10^{ - 3}$$ , simulation results verify that the OTFS and our proposed scheme can achieve a gain of 12.8 dB compared to OFDM scheme. Moreover, the proposed DFT-Spread OTFS scheme can be reduced PAPR by 2.2 dB and 1.8 dB compared to OFDM and OTFS schemes, respectively.