Patent ID: 8675570

Claim:
A method for allocating spectral bandwidth for an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), or Single Carrier Frequency-Division Multiple Access(SC-FDMA) system, comprising dividing available spectral bandwidth into a channel raster and a plurality of nominal channels, each channel for carrying an independent OFDM or OFDMA or SC-FDM signal and each channel having a corresponding nominal channel bandwidth; choosing a common subcarrier spacing of orthogonal subcarriers that divides the multiple nominal channel bandwidths and the channel raster evenly; and allocating multiple carriers to be one next to another as a group in the same frequency band with reduced guard bands or without guard bands in between, wherein a common subcarrier spacing of orthogonal subcarriers is aligned in frequency between boundaries of adjacent carriers to reduce or eliminate inter-carrier interference; wherein the common subcarrier spacing can evenly divide each of multiple of different channel raster frequencies of one or more frequency bands.