A novel multi rate orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system is proposed in this paper. It is expected to provide a flexible physical layer support to next generation wireless networks. It is mainly suited to inter carrier interference limited situations, when a large number of sub carriers are used within the available bandwidth constraint. The proposal is to alter the otherwise uniform performance of the sub carriers in an OFDM system by using different bandwidths for different subcarriers. This is advantageous in the situation where different users and data channels in a wireless network will have different data rates and quality of service requirements. Different sub carriers with different performance figures can be mapped to the data channels with matching requirements. This scheme can enhance the conventional OFDM systems to become flexible. It is shown that, using different sub carrier bandwidths can improve the throughput of some sub carriers at the cost of the others. Results show that overall system performance also improves with the proposed scheme even without any optimal mapping of data stream to the sub carriers for slightly higher frequency offsets.