Methods and systems are provided for use with wireless networks having one or more cell in which each cell includes a base station (BS), at least one relay station (RS) and at least one mobile station (MS). The at least one relay station can be used as an intermediate station for providing communication between the BS and MS. Methods are provided for allocating OFDM resources for communicating between the BS, RS and/or MS for example dividing transmission resources into uplink and downlink transmissions and methods of inserting pilot symbols intotransmission resources used by the RS. In some embodiments on the invention, the methods are consistent and/or can be used in conjunction with existing standards such as 802.16e.