Patent ID: 8428608

Claim:
A method of allocating resources for a relay enhanced cellular communication system including a base station, one or more mobile stations and one or more relay stations, comprising: assigning communication resources including subcarrier frequencies and time periods by: allocating subcarriers to one or more access communication links between mobile stations and their serving stations and between base stations and their direct mobile stations, to meet proportional data rate constraints of mobile stations while improving subcarrier spectrum utilization; allocating subcarriers to one or more relay communication links between the base station and relay stations to meet proportional data rate constraints of relay cells while improving subcarrier spectrum utilization; scheduling communication periods for access links in access zones and relay links in relay zones; selectively adjusting the scheduled communication periods for access zones and relay zones for providing coarse balancing of the resources allocated to the access links and the resources allocated to the relay links; and adjusting subcarriers among relay links for refining balancing of resource allocation between access links and relay links.