How is OFDM used?

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an efficient modulation format used in modern wireless communication systems including 5G. OFDM combines the benefits of Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) and Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) to produce a high-data-rate communication system .

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique that is used in several applications ranging from cellular systems (3GLTE, WiMAX), wireless local area networks (LANs), digital audio radio, underwater communications, and even optical light modulation .

LTE uses the popular orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) modulation scheme. It provides the essential spectral efficiency to achieve high data rates but also permits multiple users to share a common channel.

In OFDM, multiple closely spaced orthogonal subcarrier signals with overlapping spectra are transmitted to carry data in parallel . Demodulation is based on fast Fourier transform algorithms.

This is useful for LTE since it makes possible to exploit frequency dependence scheduling . For instance, it would be possible to exploit the fact that user 1 might have a better radio link quality on some specific bandwidth area of the available bandwidth.