A method and system for allocating subcarrier frequency resources for a relay enhanced cellular communication system is provided. The relay enhanced cellular communication system includes a base station, one or more mobile stations and one or more relay stations. Subcarrier allocation involves assigning a set of subcarriers by allocating subcarriers to one or more access communication links between mobile stations and their serving stations, to meet minimum data rate requirements of the access links, and allocating subcarriers to one or more relay communication links between the base station and relay stations to accommodate the data rates achieved on the corresponding access links. The serving stations may include one or more relay stations and the base station. Link balancing, multi-user diversity and minimum data rate constraint are jointly considered to achieve an optimal solution.