A Hybrid Single-Carrier/Multicarrier Transmission Scheme with Power Allocation

We propose a flexible transmission scheme which easily allows to switch between cyclic-prefixed single-carrier (CP-SC) and cyclic-prefixed multicarrier (CP-MC) transmissions. This scheme takes advantage of the best characteristic of each scheme, namely, the low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the CP-SC scheme and the robustness to channel selectivity of the CP-MC scheme. Moreover, we derive the optimum power allocation for the CP-SC transmission considering a zero-forcing (ZF) and a minimum mean-square error (MMSE) receiver. By taking the PAPR into account, we are able to make a better analysis of the overall system and the results show the advantage of the CP-SC-MMSE scheme for flat and mild selective channels due to their low PAPR and that the CP-MC scheme is more advantageous for a narrow range of channels with severe selectivity.