OFDMA for the 4/sup th/ generation cellular networks

An extended overview on the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technique and its applications in 4/sup th/ generation cellular mobile networks is presented. After introducing the main idea, a comparison between the performance of OFDMA and other multiple access systems is carried out. Moreover, some practical notes for system deployment are discussed. Finally, two standardized telecommunication systems that use OFDMA as air interface are introduced and their basic parameters are compared.