In one embodiment, an apparatus includes: a baseband processor having a preamble generation circuit to generate a preamble for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission, the preamble generation circuit to generate the preamble having a first portion comprising a first plurality of symbols, each of the first plurality of symbols having a plurality of carriers, where a subset of the plurality of carriers have non-zero values, the preamble generation circuit to generate the non-zero values using a sequence of complex values selected to optimize a peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR); a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) coupled to the baseband processor to convert the first plurality of symbols to analog signals; a mixer coupled to the DAC to upconvert the analog signals to radio frequency (RF) signals; and a power amplifier coupled to the mixer to amplify the RF signals.