Patent ID: 7126996

Claim:
A method for facilitating adaptive transmissions by a base station in a multi-carrier system where a total available bandwidth is split into a set of subbands, each subband of the set of subbands comprising at least one subcarrier, the method comprising: providing data to be transmitted to at least one transmission target; determining whether likely trustworthy channel quality data is obtainable; when likely trustworthy channel quality data is not obtainable, receiving a first channel quality report comprising an overall channel quality indicator, selecting a first set of subcarriers for transmission, and selecting a first modulation and coding scheme for the selected set of subcarriers based on the overall channel quality indicator; when likely trustworthy channel quality data is obtainable, receiving a second channel quality report comprising at least one subband channel quality indicator, selecting a second set of subcarriers within at least one subband for transmission based on the at least one subband channel quality indicator, and selecting a second modulation and coding scheme for at least one of the at least one subband selected for transmission based on a corresponding at least one subband channel quality indicator; transmitting a resource allocation control channel comprising a selected one of the first modulation and coding scheme and the second modulation and coding scheme, and the selected set of subcarriers; and transmitting at least a portion of the data on subcarriers within the resource allocation using the selected one of the first modulation and coding scheme and the second modulation and coding scheme.