Patent ID: 8254942

Claim:
A method for operating a base station in a communications system, the method comprising: receiving a resource request for radio resources for a mobile station, wherein the radio resources comprise time domain resources, frequency domain resources, and time-frequency resources; transmitting an indication of unallocated radio resources to the mobile station; numbering the unallocated radio resources to produce a sequentially numbered list of unallocated resources, wherein numbering the unallocated radio resources comprises a) initializing a counter; b) selecting a lowest time domain resource having unallocated and unnumbered time-frequency resources; c) selecting a lowest unallocated and unnumbered time-frequency resource of the selected time domain resource; d) numbering the selected time-frequency resource equal to the counter; e) incrementing the counter; f) selecting a next time domain resource modulo a number of time domain resources having unallocated and unnumbered time-frequency resources; and g) repeating the steps b, c, d, e, and f until there are no more time domain resources having unallocated and unnumbered time-frequency resources; determining a resource assignment for the resource request, wherein the resource assignment comprises at least one of the indicated unallocated radio resources and a number of radio resources; and transmitting the resource assignment to the mobile station.