Patent ID: 7839851
Filing Date: 2010-11-23
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. An apparatus for use in a wireless multicast system having a plurality of receivers, the apparatus comprising: a storage to store at least one of channel state and rate information received from the plurality of receivers; a transmitter to broadcast information over a broadcast channel to receivers in the plurality of receivers for each transmission time slot; and a controller coupled to the storage and the transmitter to adapt transmission rates of the transmitter to cause the transmitter to transmit at different rates for different transmission time slots, wherein the controller operable to: wherein the controller comprises an encoder to generate encoded blocks from the broadcast information for said each transmission time slot, using one of a group consisting of a fixed rate erasure code and a rateless code, so that the broadcast information can be recovered by all the receivers of the plurality of receivers after receiving a suitable number of encoded blocks against the erasures caused by targeting different subsets of receivers across different time slots and further wherein the transmitter is to transmit the encoded blocks to the subset of receivers.