This tutorial highlights the unique design challenges faced by mobile data systems that result from the vagaries of the harsh wireless channel, the wide and varied service profiles that are enabled by data communications, and the performance of wireline-based protocols, such as TCP/IP, with the realities of wireless links. OFDM has been shown to address these challenges and to be a key enabler of a system design that can provide high-performance mobile data communications.

OFDM is well positioned to meet the unique demands of mobile packet data traffic. Nevertheless, to seamlessly unwire all the IP applications inherent in the wired Internet and intranets (including interactive data applications and peer-to-peer applications), all layers of the OFDM air interface need to be jointly designed and optimized from the ground up for the IP data world. This means to not rely solely on OFDM's physical layer advantages, but rather to leverage them into all of the higher layers of the system.