Patent ID: 7660275

Claim:
A method of broadcasting data in a wireless broadcast network, comprising: multiplexing data for a wide-area transmission onto a first transmission span, the wide-area transmission being sent from a plurality of transmitters in the network; multiplexing data for a local transmission onto a second transmission span, the local transmission being sent from a subset of the plurality of transmitters; and broadcasting the local and wide-area transmissions via a wireless link using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), wherein the data for the wide-area transmission and the data for the local transmission are time division multiplexed (TDM) at each base station, wherein the first and second transmission spans are first and second time segments, respectively, of a frame of a predetermined time duration, and the first transmission span includes all frequency subbands usable for data transmission in the first time segment of a frame, and the second transmission span includes all frequency subbands usable for data transmission in the second time segment of the frame, and wherein the data for the local transmission is multiplexed onto fewer than all usable frequency subbands to reduce interference.