Patent ID: 7813701

Claim:
A method of operating a wireless communications system, the method comprising the steps of: initially employing a first number of sub-carriers within an operating frequency band for transmitting data over at least one communications link, the first number of sub-carriers capable of being equal to or smaller than a second number of sub-carriers forming the operating frequency band; in a first determining step, determining whether at least one portion of the operating frequency band is being subjected to an increased level of interference, while at least one portion of the operating frequency band is being subjected to a reduced level of interference, the first determining step comprising measuring a vector error associated with each of the first number of sub-carriers and determining whether the vector error associated with each of the first number of sub-carriers exceeds a specified threshold; and in the event at least one portion of the operating frequency band is being subjected to an increased interference level while at least one portion of the operating frequency band is being subjected to a reduced interference level: in a first reducing step, reducing the number of sub-carriers for transmitting data over said communications link to a first reduced number of sub-carriers smaller than the first number of sub-carriers; in a first allocating step, allocating data to be transmitted to at least one sub-carrier among the first reduced number of sub-carriers, which have corresponding position only within the portion of the operating frequency band being subjected to the reduced interference level; and transmitting the at least one sub-carrier among the first reduced number of sub-carriers over said communications link.