In a wireless network, simultaneous support of distributed and contiguous sub-carrier allocation may be accomplished in the same sub-frame or time zone. Techniques are described herein that can be used to allocate distributed and/or contiguous basic (physical) resource blocks to users by specifying a codebook index and parent node. Techniques are described herein that can be used to flexibly set a number of sub-channels over which a subscriber station indicates a channel quality indicator to a base station. Sub-channels may be represented as nodes and may be grouped to include a parent node and child nodes. By specifying a code book to use and a parent node, the channel quality indicator of the parent and children nodes can be indicated.