Abstract We consider the problem of maximizing throughput in a multi-carrier wireless network that employs predictive link adaptation. We explicitly consider the time-penalty incurred due to link adaptation. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. Firstly, several high performance algorithms (offline and online) are developed for efficient performance in multiple user and multiple channel environment under the practicable lookahead prediction of one time slot. Secondly, the presented algorithms and heuristics are shown to be competitive by deterministic and probabilistic analyses. Our results show that a modest consumption of resources for channel prediction and link adaptation may result in a significant throughput improvement. Keywords Wireless networks