Patent ID: 8428607

Claim:
In a telecommunications network including a plurality of mobile terminals in communication with a network base station, and a plurality of relay nodes configured to assist the base station with data transmissions between the base station and one or more of said plurality of mobile terminals, a method of enabling communication resource reuse amongst the plurality of said relay nodes, the method comprising: defining a plurality of communication resource sets each resource set comprising one or more communication resource elements, the communication resource sets arranged so that each relay node can receive data in a receiving resource set and transmit data in a transmission resource set; determining which of two or more relay nodes are spatially separated from one another; configuring at least two of the two or more spatially separated relay nodes to use the same communication resource sets; calculating the efficiency of a first data transmission path directly communicating between the base station and one of said mobile terminals; calculating the efficiency of a second data transmission path between the base station and the one of said mobile terminals via one or more of said relay nodes; selecting the most efficient data transmission path for use in data transmission between the base station and the one of said mobile terminals.