Patent ID: 7974176

Claim:
A method of transmitting a plurality of communications signals over a plurality of discontiguous bandwidth segments in a frequency band, comprising: defining a plurality (N FFT ) of orthogonal subcarriers across the frequency band; defining a plurality (N) of available physical subcarriers from among the orthogonal subcarriers, wherein N<N FFT , and wherein the available physical subcarriers are distributed among the plurality of discontiguous bandwidth segments; and multiplexing the plurality of communications signals onto the plurality of available physical subcarriers; wherein multiplexing the plurality of communications signals onto the plurality of available physical subcarriers comprises: assigning the communications signals to respective ones of a plurality (N) of logical subcarriers; mapping the plurality of logical subcarriers to corresponding ones of the plurality of available physical subcarriers; assigning at least one pilot signal to at least one of the plurality of logical subcarriers; and modulating each of the available physical subcarriers with data from a corresponding logical subcarrier, the method further comprising: defining a plurality (N FFT -N) of unavailable physical subcarriers within the frequency band; and setting an input data signal corresponding to each of the plurality of unavailable physical subcarriers to zero; wherein the communications signals and the at least one pilot signal comprise N information signals corresponding to the available physical subcarriers; and wherein modulating each of the available physical subcarriers with data from a corresponding logical subcarrier comprises performing an N FFT -point inverse fourier transform of the N information signals corresponding to the available physical subcarriers and the N FFT -N input data signals corresponding to each of the plurality of unavailable physical subcarriers.