Non-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing
Okay, so you know how you can listen to music on the radio, right? Well imagine a bunch of different stations playing different songs at the same time. Non-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (N-OFDM for short) is like that, but for sending data over the internet.
Instead of songs on different radio stations, different bits of data are sent over different frequencies, kind of like different colors of the rainbow. But here's where it gets tricky - in regular OFDM, each frequency is like a separate channel that doesn't interfere with the others. But in N-OFDM, the frequencies overlap each other a little bit, like if you drew on a piece of paper with a bunch of different colored markers and they started mixing together.
So why would we want that? Well, with N-OFDM we can send more data over the same amount of frequencies, which is like being able to fit more stuff in your backpack without adding any extra weight. But it also means that the different bits of data can sometimes mix together a little bit, like if you had a bunch of Legos in your backpack and they all started smashing into each other. So we have to be careful when designing N-OFDM to make sure that the different pieces of data don't get too mixed up and become hard to understand.
Instead of songs on different radio stations, different bits of data are sent over different frequencies, kind of like different colors of the rainbow. But here's where it gets tricky - in regular OFDM, each frequency is like a separate channel that doesn't interfere with the others. But in N-OFDM, the frequencies overlap each other a little bit, like if you drew on a piece of paper with a bunch of different colored markers and they started mixing together.
So why would we want that? Well, with N-OFDM we can send more data over the same amount of frequencies, which is like being able to fit more stuff in your backpack without adding any extra weight. But it also means that the different bits of data can sometimes mix together a little bit, like if you had a bunch of Legos in your backpack and they all started smashing into each other. So we have to be careful when designing N-OFDM to make sure that the different pieces of data don't get too mixed up and become hard to understand.