Patent ID: 7881260

Claim:
A method for use in a cellular, FFT based multi-carrier communications system comprising N sub-carriers, for allocating a set P of sub-carriers to be reserved for potential use as carriers of specific information from a base station to a mobile terminal, comprising the following steps: selecting a number M indicating the number of sub-carriers to be allocated to a set P equi-spaced sub-carriers, such that L=N/M is an integer, where P={(n 0 +m*L) mod N : 0≦m<M}, n 0 being the offset of the lowest numbered subcarrier in P, and allocating at least two subcarriers of the set P as subcarriers of cell-specific broadcast information, the method further comprising selecting at least one subset P i of the set P defined such that P i ⊂P and P i ={(n 0 ′+m′*L′) mod N}, where L′>L and L divides L′.