Patent ID: 8831115

Claim:
A method of a wireless multi-carrier communications system, comprising: dividing sub-carriers on an uplink into non-overlapped groups; allocating a time-frequency block, wherein the time-frequency block has a hopping duration and a non-overlapped group, and wherein each non-overlapped group hops independently of other non-overlapped groups; spreading symbols transmitted by a plurality of user terminals over the time-frequency block on the uplink, the plurality of user terminals comprising a first user terminal and a second user terminal, wherein the symbols transmitted by the first user terminal are spread using a first set of orthogonal codes differing from a second set of orthogonal codes used to spread the symbols transmitted by the second user terminal; mapping each spread symbol to a modulation symbol in the time-frequency block, each spread symbol comprising one of the symbols transmitted by the plurality of user terminals spread over the time-frequency block; generating an orthogonal waveform based on the mapped symbols; and transmitting the mapped symbols on the uplink.