Embodiments disclosed herein reduce interference at pilot symbols and also enable good interference measurements by using a combination pilot tones and null tones along with null tones. In this type of system, the receivers can estimate tile channel state information without any interference from the remaining transmitters and at the same time the receiver can measure either the individual interference channel states or the interference covariances from the silent periods. The groups of transmitters are reused in geographically separated region using a frequency reuse structure. In a preferred implementation, pilot signal is precoded using a multi-antenna precoder. The precoder may be same for pilot and data.