OFDM
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is the modulation scheme used in 4G LTE and 5G NR. It splits a wideband signal into many narrow orthogonal subcarriers, making it resilient to multipath interference. OFDM is efficient in static and low-mobility environments but sensitive to Doppler shift at high speeds — a limitation that OTFS aims to solve for 6G.
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Related terms explained
Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) is a next-generation modulation scheme that spreads data across both time and frequency using the delay-Doppler domain. Unlike OFDM, OTFS maintains performance at very high speeds (500+ km/h), making it ideal for vehicular communication, drones, and high-speed trains
Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) encodes data by varying both the amplitude and phase of a carrier signal. Higher-order QAM (256-QAM, 1024-QAM, 4096-QAM) packs more bits per symbol but requires a cleaner signal-to-noise ratio