Embodiments of the present invention relate to the field of communications technologies, and provide a communication method, a base station, user equipment, and a system. The method includes: receiving uplink data that is sent by the user equipment in a specified multiple-access manner on a time-frequency resource corresponding to the specified multiple-access manner; and sending downlink data to the user equipment in a corresponding multiple-access manner on a time-frequency resource corresponding to the corresponding multiple-access manner, where the corresponding multiple-access manner is a multiple-access manner that is obtained by searching the at least two multiple-access manners according to a prestored correspondence and that is associated with the specified multiple-access manner received by the uplink receiving module. In this way, a problem that because one multiple-access manner is used in a same communications system, requirements of different user equipments cannot be met at the same time is resolved, and an effect of meeting requirements of different user equipments is achieved because a same communications system can provide multiple multiple-access manners at the same time for selection by user equipment.