OM-DS-SS wireless LAN radio subsystem: performance in clipping environment using measured channel delay profiles

This paper investigates a new radio access scheme, based on orthogonal multicarrier DS-SS, for WLAN. The modem scheme, the sounding and equalisation techniques and the general format of the frame for various system configurations are presented, taking a realistic sounding technique into consideration. We report the analytical bit error rate performance and the simulation results, based on a measured set of indoor channel delay profiles, for both linear and ideal pre-distorted non-linear amplifiers (i.e. soft limiters). The analysis of the clipping effect in the non-linear environment allows us to specify the minimum back-off value for the various system configurations in order to balance the bit error rate performance and the efficiency of the power amplifiers. Moreover the obtained performance constitutes a lower bound reference for performance evaluation of pre-distortion schemes.