High peak - to - average power ratio (PAPR) of transmitted signals is a major shortcoming for multicarrier modulation system. This paper introduces a novel OFDM system based on dual-tree complex wavelet transform (DT-CWT). In the proposed scheme, DT-CWT is used in place of fast Fourier transform (FFT). The complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of PAPR for the proposed scheme signal achieves about 3 dB improvement in PAPR over the traditional OFDM and wavelet packet modulation (WPM) signals at 0.1 of CCDF at the cost of acceptable increase in computational complexity without using any pruning techniques. © 2009 Springer-Verlag.