Method and System for Multicarrier Communication Between a Base Station and Subscribers of Different Bandwidths

A method comprising:

• determining bandwidth profiles of multicarrier subscriber stations associated with a multicarrier base station, said bandwidth profiles being indicative of operating bandwidths of corresponding multicarrier subscriber stations;
• and
• updating a multicarrier frame structure used to support communication between said base station and said multicarrier subscriber stations based on said bandwidth profiles to generate an updated multicarrier frame structure, said updated multicarrier frame structure including a plurality of time slots that each have a predetermined number of subcarriers distributed across a full channel bandwidth, wherein each multicarrier subscriber station can be one of:
• a full channel subscriber station and a subchannel subscriber station.

A method comprising:

• determining whether a multicarrier base station is a heterogeneous base station that is capable of servicing multicarrier subscriber stations having different bandwidth profiles, based on a frame received from said multicarrier base station;
• looking for mapping information within an Mth time slot of said frame when said base station is a heterogeneous base station;
• and
• looking for mapping information within an Nth time slot of said frame when said base station is not a heterogeneous base station, wherein M and N are positive, unequal integers;
• wherein said mapping information is descriptive of a present frame structure associated with said base station.

A system comprising:

• at least one dipole antenna to provide a transition between said system and a wireless channel;
• and
• an apparatus, in communication with said at least one dipole antenna, comprising a scheduler to determine bandwidth profiles of multicarrier subscriber stations associated with the base station and to generate an updated multicarrier frame structure for use by the base station to communicate with said multicarrier subscriber stations based on said bandwidth profiles, said bandwidth profiles being indicative of operating bandwidths of corresponding multicarrier subscriber stations, said updated multicarrier frame structure to include a plurality of time slots that each have a predetermined number of subcarriers distributed across a full channel bandwidth, wherein each multicarrier subscriber station can be one of:
• a full channel subscriber station and a subchannel subscriber station.

An article comprising a storage medium having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by a computing platform, operate to:

• determine bandwidth profiles of multicarrier subscriber stations associated with a multicarrier base station, said bandwidth profiles being indicative of operating bandwidths of corresponding multicarrier subscriber stations;
• and
• update a multicarrier frame structure used to support communication between said multicarrier base station and said multicarrier subscriber stations based on said bandwidth profiles to generate an updated multicarrier frame structure, said updated multicarrier frame structure to include a plurality of time slots that each have a predetermined number of subcarriers distributed across a full channel bandwidth, wherein each multicarrier subscriber station can be one of:
• a full channel subscriber station and a subchannel subscriber station.