Patent ID: 8199843

Claim:
A method of allocating pilot locations for use in at least one of downlink and uplink communication in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system using an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme, the method comprising: alternately allocating first pilot locations for a first antenna and second pilot locations for a second antenna in two contiguous OFDM symbols of a resource block comprising OFDM symbols in a time domain and subcarriers in a frequency domain, wherein each of the alternating first pilot locations and the second pilot locations are separated by a multiple of 9 subcarriers in the frequency domain, wherein each of the first pilot locations separated by two OFDM symbols is shifted by a multiple of 3 subcarriers and each of the second pilot locations separated by two OFDM symbols is shifted by a multiple of 3 subcarriers.