An apparatus for use in an eNB, the apparatus includes circuitry to generate an assignment of one or more interlaces to a UE within a cell managed by the eNB, where the one or more interlaces are selected from a total number of interlaces, and an interlace of the total number of interlaces may include multiple resource blocks spanning within a system bandwidth. The circuitry included in the apparatus is further to encode the assignment by a bit string including one or more bits, which may be a bitmap or an encoding bit string. The circuitry included in the apparatus is further to transmit the bit string to the UE. Other embodiments may also be described and claimed.