Patent ID: 7864728

Claim:
A method of allocating a plurality of subbands (SB i ) to a plurality of streams (FL j ) of a multichannel link in a multicarrier modulation communications system, each stream (FL j ) being successively defined in a communications frame of said multichannel link by a number M j of bits to be transmitted and a noise margin Î“ j , wherein the method comprises the steps of: a) associating with each subband (SB i ) a normalized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR 0 ) i on the multichannel link; b) classifying the subbands (SB i ) in a specific order of the normalized signal-to-noise ratios (SNR 0 ) i ; c) determining an energy E i per subband (SB i ) by means of a binary allocation algorithm; d) allocating, for each stream (FL j ) taken in the order of said frame, a number N j of consecutive subbands (SB i ) taken in the order of normalized signal-to-noise ratios so that the sum of the numbers n ij of bits in each subband (SB i ) allocated to each stream (FL j ) is equal to M j , where: M j = âˆ‘ i = 1 N j â¢ n ij the number n ij of bits being calculated from energy E i and normalized signal-to-noise ratio of i carrier and from noise margin Î“ j of stream j.