Patent ID: 8422940

Claim:
A base station configured to communicate with a plurality of mobile stations and a plurality of relay nodes, wherein one or more of the plurality of mobile stations comprise a first group to be served cooperatively using centralized scheduling through a first relay node of the plurality of relay nodes and one or more of the plurality of mobile stations comprise a second group to be served non-cooperatively through a second relay node of the plurality of relay nodes using distributed scheduling, wherein the second group of mobile stations is to be served using a frequency reuse that is greater than one, the base station comprising a scheduler to schedule time-frequency resources for the first group of mobile stations and wherein the base station is configured to notify the one or more relay nodes to perform distributed scheduling for the second group of mobile stations using time-frequency resources not assigned to the first group of mobile stations and wherein the second relay node of the plurality of relay nodes is configured to randomize transmissions to the second group of mobile stations.