# What does the one-tap equalizer used with OFDM accomplish?

I've read that OFDM normally uses a one-tap equalizer. It seems that a one-tap equalizer could only scale and delay a signal. Why is this useful?

I thought multipath was handled through the cyclic-prefix and by choosing a symbol width that is large compared to the delay spread. Why is an equalizer needed at all?

Equalization in OFDM usually happens in the frequency domain. Let $X$ be the vector of subcarriers in the frequency domain and $x=IDFT(X)$ the corresponding time domain signal. Then, if the impulse response of your channel is a vector $h$, the received signal $y$ will be $y=x*h$ where $*$ referes to convolution. Then $Y=DFT(Y)=X \cdot H$ with $H=DFT(h)$ and $\cdot$ refering to element-wise multiplication. However, this is only true if $y$ is the circular convolution of $x$ and $h$ while in reality the convolution is linear. Therefore, the cyclic prefix is prepended (it needs to be at least as long as $h$) so that the linear convolution contains the circular convolution.
Then, $Y=DFT(Y)=X \cdot H$ with $H=DFT(h)$ and $\cdot$ as stated before. Since each element of $Y$ and $X$ refers to one subcarrier it can be seen that each subcarrier is multiplied with just one complex element from $H$ and hence equalization just becomes $Z=Y/H$ where again $/$ referes to element-wise division. This describes zero-forcing equalization which might not be the best choice if additive noise and interferers are present but it transports the idea.