This paper presents the satellite orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SAT-OFDM) technology as a satellite radio interface for international mobile telecommunications (IMT)-Advanced. The SAT-OFDM radio interface is designed to provide various advanced IMT services in satellite environments. For cost-effective deployment of a satellite IMT-Advanced system, the radio interface must have a high degree of commonality with third-generation partnership project long-term evolution (3GPP LTE) technology for IMT-Advanced, but it also has a number of different features. Those features are needed to adapt the 3GPP LTE technology for satellite-specific environments such as long round-trip delay, large cell size, and slow-fading satellite channel. In this paper, we summarize the key features of the SAT-OFDM technology and propose satellite specific features included in the SAT-OFDM technology as an adaption way of LTE over satellite. Then we show the performance evaluation results of the SAT-OFDM technology to see the feasibility of LTE over satellite. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.