This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2827940, IEEE
Communications Letters
JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 14, NO. 8, APRIL 2018
Improved Companding Transform for PAPR
Reduction in ACO-OFDM-based VLC Systems
Tian Zhang,Yue Zou,Jianing Sun and Shuang Qiao∗
Abstract—In this letter, an improved linear nonsymmetrical
transform (ILNST) is proposed to reduce the peak-to-average
power ratio (PAPR) for asymmetric clipping optical orthogonal
frequency division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM)-based visible light
communication (VLC) systems. The emission power conservation
criteria are implemented to calculate the enlarge coefficient with
a given compression coefficient. The transfer characteristic of a
5 mm commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is introduced to
estimate the VLC systems performance. Bit error ratio (BER)
and complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF)
simulation results show that the proposed ILNST outperforms
the classical linear nonsymmetrical transform (LNST) method in
PAPR reduction and BER enhancement.
Index Terms—Linear nonsymmetrical transform (LNST),
asymmetric clipping optical orthogonal frequency division mul-
tiplexing (ACO-OFDM), visible light communications (VLC),
peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR).
I. I NTRODUCTION
W ITH the rapid popularization of computers and intel-
ligent devices, the communication rate and coverage
of indoor access networks need to be further improved. Visi-
ble light communication (VLC) technology is just the most
promising solution for indoor high-speed data transmission
because of its advantages of providing both brightness and
data transmission simultaneously within rooms and offices
environment [1]-[4]
For VLC systems, orthogonal frequency division multiplex-
ing (OFDM) modulation has been widely applied due to its
abilities in resisting the multi-path response [5]. However,
the overlapping process associated with the IDFT operation
in the time-domain leads to high peak-to-average power ratio
(PAPR) for asymmetric clipping optical orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (ACO-OFDM). Therefore, the ACO-
OFDM signals without PAPR reduction experience significant
amplitude distortion and peak clipping effects as the practical
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have the typical characteristic of
nonlinearity [6]-[8].
In recent years, the PAPR reduction methods for VLC
systems attain a lot of concern [9]-[11]. A companding trans-
form scheme for OFDM is reported in [12], which effectively
reduces the PAPR and minimizes the out-of-band interference
with an improved BER. In [13], they employ a pilot symbol
Manuscript received January 30, 2018; revised March 12, 2018; accepted
April 10, 2018. This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds
for the Central Universities under Grant No. 2412018QD002.
T. Zhang, Y. Zou and S. Qiao are with the School of Physics, Northeast
Normal University, Changchun 130024, China (e-mail:zhangtian114@sina.cn;
m15354515154@163.com;qiaos810@163.com).
J.N. Sun is with School of Mathematics and Statistics, Northeast Normal
University, Changchun 130024, China(e-mail:sunjianing118@126.com).
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1
(PS) phase rotation method to lessen the signal peaks of the
original OFDM, which shows a better PAPR reduction com-
pared with the traditional selective mapping (SLM) method.
While in [14], the real-valued output of the DC-biased optical
OFDM (DCO-OFDM) is modulated onto the ellipse to miti-
gate the high peak values and only the imaginary part of the
complex point is transmitted. It could significantly improve
the overall performance compared with the original DCO-
OFDM systems. Moreover, a weighting method is reported in
[15], which can achieve a significant PAPR reduction with a
complex inverse process. Among these methods, companding
transforms are thought as the most attractive solution due
to its simplicity of implementation, adaptive to the arbitrary
subcarriers and with no bandwidth penalty.
In this letter, we propose and analyze an improved linear
nonsymmetrical transform (ILNST) scheme to solve the high
PAPR problem for ACO-OFDM-based VLC systems. The
compression coefficient is calculated by the emission power
conservation criteria, and the inverse transform is realized by
the index set and companding parameters.
The letter is organized as follows: section II briefly intro-
duces the ACO-OFDM-based VLC systems, and section III
offers the theory of the proposed ILNST scheme. Section IV
the simulation results are analyzed and discussed. Finally, we
conclude this letter in Section V.
II. ACO-OFDM-BASED VLC SYSTEMS
In a typical ACO-OFDM systems, the binary bits are first
modulated employing quadrature amplitude modulated (QAM)
and the subcarriers X = {X(0), X(1), X(2), . . . , X(N − 1)}
in frequency domain are constrained by the Hermitian sym-
metry mirror, which is provided as below:
X[k] = X ∗ [N − k], k = 1, 2, ..., N/2 − 1, (1)
where N is the number of subcarriers and ∗ denotes the
conjugate operation. The frequency domain signal contains
N (L − 1) padded zeros, indicating an L-time oversampling
for the time domain signal [13]. The zero padding operation
is required for capturing all the amplitude peaks of OFDM
symbols. With the inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT)
processing, the discrete base-band equivalent signal x(n) in
time-domain is obtained as:
NX
L−1
1 2πnm
x (n) = √ X(m)ej N L , n = 0, 1...N L − 1, (2)
N L m=0
where X(m) is an oversampled signal in the frequency do-
main. Then a cyclic prefix is added before each ACO-OFDM
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2827940, IEEE
Communications Letters

JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 14, NO. 8, APRIL 2018 2

Add Bias-tee

IDFT
S/P M-QAM Mirror P/S D/A
Tx bits ILNST Cyclic
Modulation Zero Negative Prefic
padding clipping
DC LED
Current Source Approximate linear range
LOS
Channel

AWGN PD
Demirror S/P Inverse Remove
P/S A/D

DFT
M-QAM
Rx bits Cyclic
Demodulation Eliminate ILNST Synchronization 5mm white commercial LED
Prefic Distortion
Zero
and
clipping
Fig. 1. Block diagram of ACO-OFDM-based VLC systems with ILNST.

ACO-OFDM

symbol to mitigate the impact of channel delay spread [16].

Here, in order to reduce the PAPR of OFDM signals, we
introduce an ILNST module before adding the cyclic prefix,
Fig. 2. V-I curve and linear fitting of 5 mm commercial LEDs.
as shown in Fig. 1. This module will be detailed introduced
in the following section. Afterward, a Bias-Tee circuit is
implemented to guarantee the indoor brightness level (400- y
1000 lux). What is more, the dc-bias current used in the DCO-
OFDM system may be larger than that of the ACO-OFDM
system in order to make the O-OFDM signal be all positive A'
for intensity modulation and direct detection (IM / DD)[17].
At the receiver side, the received signal Z(n) is affected by
additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and it is given by:
u1
Z(n) = f [x(n)] ⊗ h(n) + w(n), (3) u2
where f [.] denotes the proposed companding transform, ⊗
is the convolution operation, h(n) is the channel response s 1/u1
LNST
and w(n) denotes the AWGN with distortion component and ILNST
quantization error. After the inverse ILNST and demodulation
process, the original binary data stream can be obtained. 0 v A x

Fig. 3. Transmission profiles of different companding transforms.

III. IMPROVED LINEAR NONSYMMETRICAL
TRANSFORM
Companding transforms are well-known methods to mit- algorithm is applied to show the approximate linear range
igate the PAPR of OFDM signals for its simplicity and (20mA∼100mA) as shown in Fig. 2. It can be seen from Fig.
effectiveness in the radio frequency (RF) communications. It 2 that the peaks of ACO-OFDM signals (red line) generate
was shown in [18] that, a linear nonsymmetrical transform signal deformation within the voltage range of 4∼4.4 V.
(LNST) with an inflexion point has the best PAPR and Once the input signals are larger than 4.4 V, they suffer
BER performance among the various companding transform from top clipping effect because of the saturation character of
techniques. It enlarges small samples of OFDM symbols with LEDs. In order to solve this nonlinear problem, we propose
a given coefficient u and compresses the large ones with the an improved linear nonsymmetrical transform scheme with
reciprocal coefficient 1/u, which can be expressed as the emission power conservation criteria. Unlike the classical
 1
u x(n), |x(n)| ≤ v LNST scheme, the enlarge coefficient is not simply obtained
y(n) = , (4) by the inverse operation of the compression coefficient. The
u x(n), |x(n)| > v
proposed ILNST is presented by:
where 0 < u ≤ 1, and v is the value of inflexion point
belonging to the range of [0, max{|x(n)|}]. 
u2 x(n) + s, x(n) ≤ v
However, since VLC systems have something different with y(n) = , (5)
u1 x(n), x(n) > v
RF, such as the real and positive signals, power limitations
and so on, we need to make some revisions on LNST for where 0 < u1 ≤ 1, u2 > 1 and s is a tiny adjustment constant,
adapting to the VLC systems. Furthermore, the typical voltage which is mainly used for lifting the small values of ACO-
to current (V-I) characteristic of LEDs is nonlinear, which is OFDM signals. The transmission profiles of the LNST and
regarded as the major nonlinearity source of VLC systems. the proposed ILNST are depicted in Fig. 3, where A is the
Therefore, the ACO-OFDM signal with high PAPR experi- peak amplitude of the original ACO-OFDM signals and A0 is
ences significant in-band and out-of-band distortions because the compressed peak amplitude with companding transforms.
of the nonlinear characteristic induced by the transmitter. As we all know, the high amplitudes play more important roles
The V-I curve of 5 mm commercial LEDs is measured by than the rest ones for PAPR. Therefore, a reasonable u1 can be
experiments and a linear polynomial fitting with the robust first given to compress the peaks. Then u2 can be calculated

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2827940, IEEE
Communications Letters

JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 14, NO. 8, APRIL 2018 3

100

10-1

Pr(PAPR>PAPR )
0
Inflexion point v=0.6A
New dynamic range

10-2 v=0.7A
Original ACO-OFDM
LNST@v=0.5A v=0.6A
ILNST@v=0.5A
LNST@v=0.6A
ILNST@v=0.6A
LNST@v=0.7A
ILNST@v=0.7A
10-3
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
PAPR [dB]
0

Fig. 4. The 64-subcarrier ACO-OFDM with the proposed ILNST.

Fig. 5. PAPR comparisons for ACO-OFDM signals with LNST and ILNST.
TABLE I
SIMULATION PARAMETERS FOR THE COMPANDING
TRANSFORM

Method u1 v1
LNST 0.56 0.5A
ILNST 0.56 0.5A
by:
X 2
X 2
[u1 x(n)] + [u2 x(n) + s] =
x(n)>v x(n)≤v
An example for the 16-QAM ACO-OFDM (64 subcarriers)
with ILNST (v = 0.6A, u1 = 0.67, u2 = 1.46, s = 0.01) is
shown in Fig. 4. It can be seen that samples smaller than the
value of inflexion point are enlarged and lifted by u2 and s,
respectively. And the rest of samples are compressed by u1
instead. Therefore, the ACO-OFDM with lower PAPR can be
obtained by the proposed method.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
Here, PAPR is introduced to evaluate the ratio of the max
power to the mean power of ACO-OFDM signals as below:
max |x (n)|
P AP R = 10log10 h i
2
E |x (n)|
where E[.] is defined to calculate the mean value of ACO-
OFDM signals. And the impacts of the PAPR reduction
methods are shown by the complementary cumulative distri-
bution function (CCDF), which indicates the PAPR reduction
methods performance by the probability:
CCDF = Probability (P AP R > P AP R0 ) .
Then, the PAPR results of ACO-OFDM signals with and
without the above companding transform methods are given
and discussed, respectively. And the crucial parameters em-
ployed in the CCDF simulations are shown in Table I. For the
proposed ILNST, parameter u2 is calculated by the emission
power conservation criteria from (6), and its values change
as the ACO-OFDM signals change. Therefore, a number of
1 × e5 random ACO-OFDM signals are employed in this
simulation with the different inflexion point v and the same
v2 v3
compression coefficient u1 to demonstrate the PAPR reduction
0.6A 0.7A
performance of the proposed scheme. The CCDF simulation
0.6A 0.7A
results of 256-subcarrier 16-QAM ACO-OFDM signals with
the classical LNST and the proposed ILNST are plotted in
Fig. 5, respectively. In addition, the original ACO-OFDM
with no PAPR reduction is also shown in this figure as a
X 2
[x(n)] . (6) reference. It can be concluded that the proposed scheme can
achieve a better PAPR reduction performance compared with
the classical LNST under the same inflexion point of 0.5∼0.7.
Note that the PAPR reduction performance is also affected by
the value of companding coefficients (u1 , u2 ). However, the
P AP R0 requirement is not the smaller the better. The very
small PAPR increases the quantization error and wastes the
dynamic range of LEDs.
To evaluate the computational complexity of LNST and
ILNST schemes, the CCDF simulations are performed via 64-
bit Matlab software on a computer with Intel (R) Core (TM)
i5-6600 CPU @ 3.30 GHz, 3.30 GHz, and RAM 8.00 GB.
For the number of 1×e5 standard 256-subcarrier ACO-OFDM
2 signals, the running time is 1.4160 seconds and 1.4983 seconds
for LNST and ILNST, respectively. That means the time differ-
(dB), (7)
ence of a single transform is very tiny. Therefore, the improved
transform has the potential for high-speed communications.
Next, we want to analyze the BER performance of the
proposed ILNST and the classical LNST method. To tradeoff
between BER performance and PAPR reduction effects, we
choose the values of v and u are 0.5A and 0.56 for the
following simulation. The 5 mm white commercial LEDs as
(8)
shown in the inset of Fig. 2 is employed in this simulation.
From Fig.2, we conclude that the turn-on voltage is about 2.5
V. The linear range of this 5 mm commercial LED is nearly
1.0 Vpp . The bias point for the ACO-OFDM system in this
simulation is set as 3.0 V. Note that input signals producing
forward current larger than 125 mA are clipped, which are
set to be the constant value of 125. A polynomial fitting of
the third degree is applied to obtain the approximate transfer
characteristic model, which shows a satisfied fitting effect
with relatively low computational complexity. Therefore, the

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2018.2827940, IEEE
JOURNAL OF LATEX CLASS FILES, VOL. 14, NO. 8, APRIL 2018
64QAM
16QAM
32QAM
Fig. 6. BER results of M-QAM ACO-OFDMs with LNST and ILNST.
clipping model of the real LEDs is given by:
 2011.
 125 mA, vp > 4.4 V
I(vp ) = p1 vp 3 + p2 vp 2 + p3 vp + p4 , vp ∈ else
0 mA, vp < 2.5 V

where the vp is the peak-to-peak voltage of the input signal,
I(.) is the corresponding forward current and the coefficient
pi of 3-polynomial fitting is obtained by the Curve Fitting
Toolbox 3.5 of MATLAB R2014b. The constellation sizes of
16, 32, and 64 are employed in this simulation to compare
the BER performance of 256-subcarrier ACO-OFDMs with
no companding, LNST and the proposed ILNST, respectively
[19]. Here, the vp of the input ACO-OFDM signal is set as
1.7 V to ensure some amplitudes of the input signals plus the
dc-bias voltage beyond the upper boundary of the approximate
linear range. The BER simulation results are shown in Fig. 6.
It can be seen from Fig. 6 that the proposed ILNST shows
a better BER performance than the classical LNST method.
The blue dash-and-dot line is calculated with no companding
transform, which is just plotted for BER comparisons. At a
BER of 10−4 , the SNR improvements of the proposed ILNST
are < 2dB, ∼ 3dB and > 4dB for ACO-OFDMs with 16-
QAM, 32-QAM and 64-QAM, respectively compared with the
LNST method. From the comparison, we can also find that
the high-order QAM-based VLC systems with no companding
transform suffer much severer degradation of BER due to the
high PAPR problem. Note that when the SNR is greater than
21 dB, the BER of 16QAM ACO-OFDMs with the proposed
ILNST is lower than the Forward Error Correction (FEC)
limit. From Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, we can conclude that the
proposed ILNST has the ability to obtain superiority in BER
enhancement and PAPR reduction compared with the classical
LNST method.
V. C ONCLUSION
In this letter, we have demonstrated our initial efforts to
employ an improved LNST scheme for PAPR reduction and
BER enhancement in the ACO-OFDM-based VLC systems.
We calculate the enlarge coefficient with a given compression
coefficient by the emission power conservation criteria and
adopting the companding parameters effectively compress the
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Communications Letters
4
peak amplitudes while enlarging the rest ones. In addition,
the computational complexity of LNST and ILNST are given
and discussed. Besides, the transfer characteristic of 5 mm
commercial LEDs is also introduced to calculate the BER
results of these two companding transforms. The CCDF and
BER simulation results indicate that the proposed ILNST out-
performs the classical LNST method for the PAPR reduction
in ACO-OFDM systems, thus demonstrating its ability of
application in the field of VLC. In a real scenario, for a good
tradeoff between the PAPR reduction and BER enhancement,
the inflexion point v and companding parameters (u1 , u2 ,
s) should be chosen with reference to the LEDs transfer
characteristics. And more detailed analysis and systematic
experiments are left for our future work.
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