Patent ID: 8548376

Claim:
A method of operating a relay station, the method comprising: receiving information related to a beacon signal set from a base station (BS); receiving a beacon signal transmitted by a user equipment (UE), wherein a beacon signal is allocated for each UE that communicates with the BS by applying a different cyclic shift value to a common base sequence and the beacon signal set includes an identifier of the UE and a status indicator indicating whether the UE belongs to a relay region; measuring the received beacon signal to obtain a measurement result; determining whether the UE belongs to the relay region based on the status indicator and the identifier of the UE; selectively transmitting the measurement result to the base station based on the measurement result; and receiving routing information for the UE that is determined based on the measurement result, wherein the routing information indicates whether the UE communicates with the BS via the relay station or communicates with the BS directly, wherein the measurement result is transmitted to the base station only when the measurement result is less than a predetermined threshold if the UE communicates with the BS via the relay station, and wherein the measurement result is transmitted to the BS only when the measurement is greater than the predetermined threshold if the UE does not communicate with the BS via the relay station.