Patent ID: 8576938

Claim:
A system for communicating between stations over a shared medium, the system comprising: a receiving station comprising one or more antennas, the receiving station configured to: receive a waveform from a transmitting station via the one or more antennas coupled to the shared medium, the waveform including at least a first symbol comprising a first set of frequency components at predetermined carrier frequencies modulated with preamble information and a second set of frequency components at predetermined carrier frequencies modulated with information, the carrier frequencies of the first and second sets of frequency components being orthogonal, sample a series of values of the received waveform at the one or more antennas starting a time associated with the beginning of a time slot boundary, process the sampled values from the first symbol received by the one or more antennas based on channel characteristics estimated from the first set of frequency components to decode information encoded on a first subset of the second set of frequency components, and process the sampled values from the first symbol received by the one or more antennas based on channel characteristics estimated from the first set of frequency components and the first subset of the second set of frequency components to decode information encoded on a second subset of the second set of frequency components.