Methods and apparatus for allocating tones for communications in the strip-symbol periods in an OFDM system are described. In a strip-symbol, the signal is transmitted using the tones in a tone subset, which is selected from a predetermined set of tone subsets according to a fixed schedule sequence. Adjacent base stations and sectors use the same set of tone subsets but different schedule sequence to minimize the number of collisions between the tone subsets used in adjacent sectors and neighboring cells.