A method,
system and apparatus are provided for effecting peak power reduction of a communication
signal. In particular, the method achieves peak power reduction by generating an out of band peak power reduction (OBPPR)
signal; which reduces the peaks of the waveform. The OBPPR
signal can be generated at
baseband, IF or RF. The method can be implemented in the digital domain using FPGA, DSP or ASIC or can be implemented in the analog domain using discrete circuitry,
RFIC's or MMIC's or multi-
chip modules. The method does not introduce significant amounts of EVM or sacrifice any capacity and as such offers considerable advantages compared to current state of the art methods. Furthermore, the method can be combined and is approximately additive with existing power
reduction methods to effect greater levels of peak power reduction. The inventor has demonstrated a
system which takes an OFDM waveform with a PAPR of 7.16 dB as an input, and produces an output waveform with a PAPR of 4.5 dB, while introducing very negligible amounts of EVM. The inventor has also demonstrated a two carrier
OFDM transmitter as well as a Multi-Carrier
GSM transmitter with 8 carriers, where the OBPPR signal was able to reduce the peak to average
power ratio of the waveform from 9 dB to 2.8 dB and from 9.5 dB to 4.2 dB respectively.