Patent ID: 8913548

Claim:
A method of transmitting control information for supporting a relay system, the method performed by a relay station (RS) and comprising: receiving a first message at a downlink (DL) relay zone in a DL subframe from a base station (BS), the first message including preamble offset information indicating a beginning time of a transmission of a broadcast channel (BCH) signal and zone allocation information indicating configuration of odd-hop RS subframes; and transmitting a second message at a DL transmit zone in the DL subframe to one or more of a mobile station (MS) and a subordinate relay station (SRS), the second message including frame offset information indicating a beginning time of a transmission of a BCH signal and zone allocation information indicating configuration of even-hop RS subframes, wherein the beginning time of the transmission of the BCH signal is changed according to the preamble offset information, the preamble offset information presenting the beginning time of the transmission of the BCH signal from a current frame, wherein the DL subframe is one of eight subframes included in a frame and the frame is one of four frames included in a superframe, and wherein the zone allocation information of the first message includes relay type information indicating whether the RS is an odd-hop RS or an even-hop RS and relay operation information indicating a subframe configuration according to an uni-directional relay system or a bi-directional relay system.