ADVANCES IN HARDWARE-AWARE MODULATION DESIGN AND RESOURCE ALLOCATION OPTIMIZATION FOR OFDM COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Abstract

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique to achieve spectrum and energy efficient transmission with robust performance for broadband communications. However, traditional OFDM waveforms generally have high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and conventional techniques to extend the communication range generally require high implementation cost and power consumption. In this thesis, we investigate two hardware-aware techniques for OFDM-based systems and design efficient solutions for their corresponding resource allocation optimization problems. First, we present a new modulation scheme for OFDM, termed flexible multi-group single-carrier (FMG-SC) modulation, which achieves a flexible trade-off between data rate and PAPR compared to existing OFDM and single-carrier modulation. Second, we investigate a novel intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-enhanced OFDM system and propose a practical transmission protocol for it. Efficient algorithms are developed to solve the non-convex optimization problems for both works alongside with extensive simulations to demonstrate the performances under various system setups.