In this paper, we introduce an analytical study of the impact of high-power amplifier (HPA) nonlinear distortion (NLD) on the bit error rate (BER) of multicarrier techniques. Two schemes of multicarrier modulations are considered in this work: the classical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and the filter bank-based multicarrier using offset quadrature amplitude modulation (FBMC/OQAM), including different HPA models. According to Bussgang's theorem, the in-band NLD is modeled as a complex gain in addition to an independent noise term for a Gaussian input signal. The BER performance of OFDM and FBMC/OQAM modulations, transmitting over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels, is theoretically investigated and compared to simulation results. For simple HPA models, such as the soft envelope limiter, it is easy to compute the BER theoretical expression. However, for other HPA models or for real measured HPA, BER derivation is generally intractable. In this paper, we propose a general method based on a polynomial fitting of the HPA characteristics and we give theoretical expressions for the BER for any HPA model.

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