Patent ID: 8340060

Claim:
A method for a femtocell located within a coverage area of a macrocell, comprising: receiving an uplink (UL) spectrum scheduling information from the macrocell, the UL spectrum scheduling information identifying occupied subcarriers within a plurality of UL subcarriers, the occupied subcarriers being assigned to mobile stations within the macrocell; at a femtocell base station, performing energy detection for UL transmissions in the occupied subcarriers; from the received UL spectrum scheduling information and the UL transmission energy detection, identifying a subset of the occupied subcarriers assigned to mobile stations within the macrocell that are within an interfering distance to the femtocell base station; and assigning subcarriers from the plurality of UL subcarriers that do not belong to the subset for UL transmissions from one or more femtocell mobile stations to the femtocell base station.