Patent ID: 7839822

Claim:
A method of assigning radio resource in an OFDMA-based wireless communication system to each of a plurality of mobile stations, the method comprising: dividing said radio resource into a plurality of assignment units within a frame, each assignment unit being established by either a first type of assignment or a second type of assignment, wherein an assignment unit established by said first type of assignment comprises a plurality of subcarriers that are contiguous in both time and frequency, and an assignment unit established by said second type of assignment comprises a plurality of subcarriers that are disjoint and are equally-spaced in frequency; communicating an assignment for each of a plurality of mobile stations by a base station; multiplexing said assignment units within said frame such that assignment units established by said first type of assignment are assigned to be in a first zone of said frame and assignment units established by said second type of assignment are assigned to be in a second zone of said frame; and communicating by said base station to each of said mobile stations a demarcation location between the first zone and the second zone.