Method and apparatus for radio resource allocation in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing communication system

Abstract

In an OFDM communication system, wherein a frequency bandwidth is divided into multiple Physical Resource Units (PRUs), a Frequency Partitioning Configuration Module (FPCM) is provided that configures a physical layer for use in multiple coverage areas. The FPCM divides the PRUs into a first group, for frequency selective allocations, and a second group, for frequency diverse allocations. The FPCM subdivides each of the two groups into multiple sets of PRUs, maps the sets of PRUs from the first group to consecutive PRUs allocated for contiguous segment allocation (CS-PRUs), and maps the sets of PRUs from the second group to consecutive PRUs allocated for distributed segment allocation (DS-PRUs). The FPCM permutes the DS-PRUs and allocates the CS-PRUs and the permuted DS-PRUs to at least one frequency partition.