Patent ID: 7974178
Filing Date: 2011-07-05
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: generating a number of clusters by a base station in a cellular neighborhood, the cellular neighborhood further comprising a plurality of mobile stations, wherein transmissions between the base station and any of the plurality of mobile stations take place over a channel, each cluster having one or more pilot sub-carriers per orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol; comparing a spectral efficiency of each generated cluster, wherein the following formula is used to identify one or more clusters approaching a maximum:  where OH is an overhead of a pilot sub-carrier configuration in the cluster, SE is the spectral efficiency, SNR is the signal-to-noise ratio, and SNRLoss is the signal-to-noise ratio loss due to channel estimation errors; selecting a smaller number of clusters from the generated clusters by the base station based on the comparison; and repeatedly discarding the smaller number of clusters by the base station, until a final cluster remains; and using the final cluster generated by the base station to transmit data over the channel to one or more of the plurality of mobile stations.