A method for communicating over a wireless backhaul channel comprising generating a radio frame comprising a plurality of time slots, wherein each time slot comprises a plurality of symbols in time and a plurality of sub-carriers in a system bandwidth, broadcasting a broadcast channel signal comprising a transmission schedule to a plurality of remote units in a number of consecutive sub-carriers centered about a direct current (DC) sub-carrier in at least one of the time slots in the radio frame regardless of the system bandwidth, and transmitting a downlink (DL) control channel signal and a DL data channel signal to a first of the remote units, wherein the DL data channel signal is transmitted by employing a single carrier block transmission scheme comprising a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) spreading for frequency diversity.