Adaptive multicarrier modulation: a convenient framework for time-frequency processing in wireless communications

A historical perspective of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is given with reference to its literature. Its advantages and disadvantages are reviewed, and its performance is characterized over highly dispersive channels. The effects of both time- and frequency-domain synchronization errors are quantified, and a range of solutions proposed in the recent literature are reviewed. One of the main objectives of this review is to highlight the recent thinking behind adaptive bit allocation and turbo coding in the context of OFDM. This paper concludes with a wide-ranging throughput comparison of the schemes discussed herein under the unified constraint of a fixed target bit error rate of 10/sup -4/.