Estimating the effect of the HPA non-linearity on the symbol error rate in OFDM transmission

We study the effect of the HPA non-linearity on the symbol error rate in OFDM transmission. The conventional analysis (Gaussian distribution of the distortion terms) is revisited and it is shown that it fails to give accurate results in the lower probability region. A new approach is presented providing upper bounds on the assumption that the OFDM signal can be modeled as a stationary Gaussian random process.