Comparison survey of 4G competitors (OFDMA, MC CDMA, UWB, IDMA)

In the fast growing world, the need of people to communicate and get connected with each other is increasing. The demand for timely access to information regardless of location, better quality of service (QoS), higher data rates and better security are a few motivational factors for the research and development (R&D) of the fourth generation (4G) communication systems. With the evolution of wireless standards, from the first generation (1G) uptil now, access schemes used have also exhibited increase in efficiency, capacity and scalability. Multiple access schemes for the 4G systems is a hot topic for research nowadays. This paper presents a brief overview of the reasons for migrating towards 4G. It provides a look at some of the recent access schemes including Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple access(OFDMA), Multicarrier Code Division Multiple Access(MC CDMA), Ultra Wide Band(UWB) and Interleave Division Multiple Access(IDMA). All these schemes can be potential candidates for the future 4G systems. We have compared these schemes by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each scheme separately.