a novel and useful mechanism for reducing the required backoff and the peak to average power ratio needed for an ofdm transmitter whiles still meeting spectral mask and evm specifications . the mechanism searches , for each packet to be transmitted , for several possible scrambler and encryption sequences that would yield the best spectral mask and evm with lowest papr . the search can be performed using the existing transmitter and receiver phy circuit chain to modulate and demodulate the candidate hypotheses . once the scrambler sequence and / or encryption sequence is selected , the packet is transmitted using the selected scrambler and encryption sequences . in addition , the invention exploits the fact that even for very low backoff margins , a reduced number of candidate hypotheses may be tested while still yielding a high probability of meet the spectral mask and evm specifications .