Apparatus and method for resource allocation in a MIMO-OFDM communication system

Techniques to schedule terminals for data transmission on the downlink and/or uplink in a MIMO-OFDM system based on the spatial and/or frequency "signatures" of the terminals. A scheduler forms one or more sets of terminals for possible (downlink or uplink) data transmission for each of a number of frequency bands. One or more subhypotheses may further be formed for each hypothesis, with each sub-hypothesis corresponding to (1) specific assignments of transmit antennas to the terminal(s) in the hypothesis (for the downlinks) or (2) a specific order for processing the uplink data transmissions from the terminal(s) (for the uplink). The performance of each sub-hypothesis is then evaluated (e.g., based on one or more performance metrics).; One sub-hypothesis is then selected for each frequency band based on the evaluated performance, and the one or more terminals in each selected sub-hypothesis are then scheduled for data transmission on the corresponding frequency band.