Abstract:
A downlink resource block in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system can be shared among multiple wireless communication devices (WCDs) by assigning one or more orthogonal codes to each WCD. To transmit data to the WCDs using the downlink resource block, a base station may receive a data stream that includes respective data for each of the WCDs and encode each WCD's respective data with a respective orthogonal code assigned to that WCD to generate an encoded data stream. An OFDM transmitter in the base station may receive the encoded data stream and transmit the encoded data in the form of OFDM symbols in the downlink resource block. A WCD can receive the downlink resource block, recover the encoded data from the OFDM symbols, and use the one or more orthogonal codes assigned to it to recover the data for that WCD from the encoded data.