Patent ID: 8279836

Claim:
A base station in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access (OFDMA) system comprising: a) subchannel definition logic adapted to provide a subchannel definition to a first plurality of subcarriers; b) dividing and multiplexing encoding logic adapted to provide dividing-multiplexing coding for a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols, said OFDM symbols comprising said first plurality of subcarriers; c) Inverse Fourier Transform (IFT) logic adapted to provide an IFT on each of said first plurality of subcarriers to generate said plurality of OFDM symbols, said first plurality of subcarriers being defined in a soft handoff zone comprising a first dimension of subchannels, said first dimension of subchannels comprising said first plurality of subcarriers; and a second dimension of a divided and multiplexed plurality of OFDM symbols; said first plurality of subcarriers in said soft handoff zone having the subchannel definition; and d) transmit circuitry transmitting said first plurality of subcarriers for reception by a subscriber station.