Patent ID: 8165046

Claim:
A base station for wirelessly communicating with a plurality of terminals, comprising: a transmitter configured to encode data into a downlink sub-frame, and a receiver configured to receive data from an uplink sub-frame, the downlink sub-frame having control information including a preamble for synchronizing the base station with terminals which are scheduled to receive data in the downlink sub-frame and a frame map which contains information on at least two scheduled events and respective associated, physical (PHY) modes, and at least two data blocks with downlink data for the scheduled terminals, each data block having a bandwidth allocation in accordance with the frame map and being encoded according to the respective PHY mode; and an antenna system comprised of smart antennas for transmitting the downlink sub-frame, wherein the downlink data is transmitted to at least one of the scheduled terminals using beam-forming, wherein the control information is transmitted to the scheduled terminals using a PHY mode which includes a most robust PHY mode compatible with the scheduled terminals.