Provided is a method of generating a pilot pattern capable of perform adaptive channel estimation, and a method and apparatus of a base station and a method and apparatus of a terminal using the pilot pattern. The pilot pattern selects pilot symbol positions based on distances from pilots of previous orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) symbols to a subcarrier position of a current OFDMA symbol in the frequency domain and the time domain, so that a low pilot density is maintained so as to effectively transmit data, and stable channel estimation performance can be obtained even in a bad channel environment. In addition, the minimum burst allocation size is determined according to the channel environment between the base station and the terminal, guaranteeing channel estimation performance suitable for the channel environment, and improving granularity, channel estimation latency, and channel estimation memory size.