Patent ID: 8526412

Claim:
A method of transmitting data in a wireless multi-carrier communication system, comprising: allocating slots to each of a plurality of data symbol streams and pilot symbols, wherein each slot is a unit of transmission and a plurality of slots are frequency division multiplexed in each symbol period; multiplexing data symbols in each data symbol stream onto the slots allocated to the data symbol stream and pilot symbols onto the slots allocated to the pilot symbols; forming a composite symbol stream with multiplexed data symbols for the plurality of data symbol streams and pilot symbols, wherein the plurality of data symbol streams are independently recoverable by a receiver; forming a plurality M interlaces with U frequency subbands usable for transmission of the composite symbol stream, where U >1 and each interlace comprises a different set of uniformly distributed frequency subbands selected from among the U frequency subbands so that each of the U frequency subbands belongs to only one interlace and consecutive subbands in each set are spaced apart by M subbands; and mapping the plurality of slots in each symbol period to the plurality of interlaces for transmitting the composite symbol stream so that interlaces used for pilot transmission have varying distances to interlaces used for data transmission.