Adaptive OFDM for wideband radio channels

An OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) transmission system is simulated with time-variant transfer functions measured with a wideband channel sounder. The individual subcarriers are modulated with fixed and adaptive signal alphabets. Furthermore, a frequency-independent as well as the optimum power distribution are used. The simulations show that with adaptive OFDM, the required signal power for an error probability of 10/sup -3/ can be reduced by 5...15 dB compared with fixed OFDM. The fraction of channel capacity which can be achieved with adaptive OFDM depends on the average signal-to-noise ratio and the propagation scenario.