Patent ID: 8265029

Claim:
A method of assigning a radio resource in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: transmitting at least one region boundary to a mobile station, the at least one region boundary indicating a division of time-frequency resources into at least two regions; determining an area of a first region of the at least two regions, the area of the first region being a multiple of a number of OFDM symbols in the first region and a number of OFDM sub-channels in the first region; determining a number of nominal base nodes of pre-defined area that will fill the area of the first region; determining a number of imaginary base nodes, the number of imaginary base nodes being a difference between the number of nominal base nodes and a next highest power of a pre-selected integer; determining an area of a non-nominal base node when the area of the first region divided by the pre-defined area is not an integer; logically apportioning the time-frequency resources of the first region into the number of nominal base nodes, the number of imaginary base nodes, and the non-nominal base node; determining a channel identifier assignment for the mobile station, the channel identifier corresponding to a collection of base nodes from a channel tree, the channel tree having base nodes that are determined based on the nominal base nodes, the imaginary base nodes and the non-nominal base node; and transmitting an indication of the determined channel identifier to the mobile station.