Aspects of the present application use a linear transformation of a sparse mapped single carrier transmission at a transmitter, for which a comparable inverse transform of the linear transform applied at the transmitter can be applied at the receiver. The linear transform reduces the sparsity of sparse mapped symbols. The use of the linear transform to reduce the sparsity enables peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and/or cubic metric to be reduced as compared to if the linear transform is not used. The linear transforms may be implemented in a block-wise manner, element-wise manner or combination thereof.