Patent ID: 8416800

Claim:
A method for use in a mobile terminal to allocate sub-carriers in a TDM (Time Division Multiplex) multi-carrier system, comprising: transmitting a probe message to a network device over a first set of sub-carriers during an uplink transmission period of a first period, wherein the probe message is used by the network device to perform channel estimation for the first set of sub-carriers; receiving an allocation message sent from the network device during a downlink transmission period of the first period, to obtain information about at least one of a set of uplink sub-carriers and a set of downlink sub-carriers allocated to the terminal, wherein the allocation message includes the result for channel estimation performed on the probe message by the network device; receiving downlink traffic over at least one sub-carrier of the set of downlink sub-carriers during a downlink traffic transmission period of a second period; selecting a second set of sub-carriers from the set of uplink sub-carriers in a predefined frequency-hop mode, to avoid frequency-selective fading; and transmitting uplink traffic over the second set of sub-carriers during an uplink traffic transmission period of the second period.