On Performance Limits of DFT Spread OFDM Systems

DFT Spread OFDM has been proposed recently to reduce the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of conventional OFDM transmission. Besides PAPR reduction, an important implication of DFT Spreading is that the independent parallel sub-channels between the sub-carriers cease to exist. This in turn leads to difference in its performance limits as compared to the conventional OFDM system. This paper analyzes the error probabilities of DFT Spread OFDM systems, and derives their analytical closed form expressions for the AWGN, fading AWGN, multipath and fading multipath channel scenarios. Simulation results presented in last section confirm the validity of the derived analytical expressions.