Patent ID: 8374135

Claim:
A method for allocating tiles corresponding to time-frequency resource blocks of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) frames dedicated to a macro cell base station to facilitate reuse of macro cell resources by distributed extension cell base stations, said method comprising: providing a chart defining location zones composing the macro cell; allocating at least a portion of said tiles to macro cell users by considering, for each user, both a total number of macro cell users in a corresponding zone in which the user is located and a marginal utility for the user that is based on instantaneous rate and throughput information for the user; and transmitting to the extension cell base stations an indication of which zones are employed by macro cell users to enable extension cell base stations to assign at least a portion of said tiles to extension cell users, wherein tiles are allocated to macro cell users affording a highest utility and occupancy measure, wherein said utility and occupancy measure is R m R m ′ ⁢  M z ⁡ ( m )  , wherein R m is instantaneous rate information for a particular macro cell user on a particular tile, R′ m is the average throughput information for the particular macro cell user and M z(m) is a total number of macro cell users in a particular zone in which the particular macro cell user is located.