Patent ID: 8442151

Claim:
A method for transmitting a reference signal in a multiple antenna system using M antennas (M>2, where M is a natural number), the method comprising: transmitting a common reference signal through N antennas (N<M); and transmitting a dedicated reference signal through M−N antennas, wherein: the common reference signal is transmitted to all user equipments within a cell, and the dedicated reference signal is transmitted to at least one user equipment within the cell, wherein: a resource block is defined for each of the M antennas, the resource block comprises a plurality of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols and a plurality of subcarriers, each element of the resource block is a resource element, and the common reference signal or the dedicated reference signal is transmitted through a reference symbol which corresponds to a resource element at a specific position in the resource block for each of the M antennas, wherein: a first reference signal for one of the M antennas is generated based on a first sequence, and a second reference signal for the other one of the M antennas is generated based on a second sequence, and wherein the first reference signal and the second reference signal are multiplexed and are transmitted on the same resource element in the resource block.