The design tradeoffs of turbo-coded burst-by-burst adaptive orthogonal freq
uency division multiplex (OFDM) wideband transceivers are analyzed. We demo
nstrate that upon aiming for a higher throughput a higher proportion of low
-quality OFDM subcarriers has to be used for the transmission of inherently
vulnerable high-order modem modes, transmitting several bits per subcarrie
r, Upon invoking turbo coding and adjusting the modem mode switching regime
near-error-free performance can be achieved at the cost of a reduced throu
ghput. Various blind modem mode detection techniques have also been investi
gated and the most complex channel coding trellis-based detection algorithm
was found to be the most powerful. Last, the design tradeoffs of spectral
pre-equalization have been explored and qualtified, We concluded that AOFDM
provides a convenient framework for adjusting the required target integrit
y and throughput both with and without turbo channel coding.