On the Use of Hexagonal Constellation for Peak-to-Average Power Ratio Reduction of an ODFM Signal

One of the main drawbacks of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the OFDM signal. In this paper, we propose the use of hexagonal constellation for PAPR reduction of an OFDM signal. Because hexagonal constellation is the densest packing of regularly spaced points in two dimensions, we can have more signal points in a given area with hexagonal constellation than with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constellation. We can exploit these extra degrees of freedom provided by the hexagonal constellation for PAPR reduction of an OFDM signal. We will apply the proposed technique to eliminate data rate loss due to the side information in partial transmit sequence (PTS) technique and selected mapping (SLM) technique.