Constellation Shaping under Phase Noise Impairment for Sub-THz Communications

Abstract: The large untapped spectrum in the sub-THz allows for ultra-high throughput communication to realize many seemingly impossible applications in 6G. One of the challenges in radio communications in sub-THz is the hardware impairments. Specifically, phase noise is one key hardware impairment, which is accentuated as we increase the frequency and bandwidth. Furthermore, the moderate output power of the sub-THz power amplifier demands limits on peak to average power ratio (PAPR) signal design. Single carrier frequency domain equalization (SC-FDE) has been identified as a suitable candidate for sub-THz, although some challenges such as phase noise and PAPR still remain to be tackled. In this work, we design a phase noise robust, modest PAPR SC waveform by geometrically shaping the constellation under practical conditions. We formulate the waveform optimization problem in its augmented Lagrangian form and use a back-propagation-inspired technique to obtain a constellation design that is numerically robust to phase noise, while maintaining a relatively low PAPR compared to the conventional waveforms.