Patent ID: 7760812

Claim:
A HARQ (Hybrid ARQ) method in which data is transmitted/received with N transmit antennas of a transmitter and M receive antennas of a receiver, wherein, each transmit antenna transmits the data by using L subcarriers, wherein the M and N are natural numbers and L is a multiple of 2, the method including: a) converting the data into N data streams, then converting each data stream into L substreams, allocating N×L subcarriers to the N×L substreams according to a subcarrier allocation table prestored in the transmitter and the receiver, and transmitting the N×L substreams by the N transmit antennas; b) recovering the received data to the original N data streams according to the subcarrier allocation table prestored in the receiver, checking if each data stream is received correctly and sending feedback information to the transmitter, wherein the feedback information includes acknowledgements (ACKs) corresponding to correctly received data streams or negative acknowledgements (NACKs) corresponding to incorrectly received data streams and an updated subcarrier allocation table, wherein, based on equivalent channel gains of the N×L subcarriers and error characteristics of the N data streams, the updated subcarrier allocation table is obtained according to a principle of the subcarrier allocation in which a subcarrier with a highest equivalent channel gain is allocated to a data stream with a largest error size and a subcarrier with lowest equivalent channel gain is allocated to a data stream with a smallest error size or by a principle of subcarrier group allocation in which a group with a highest average equivalent channel gain is allocated to the data stream with the largest error size and a group with a lowest average equivalent channel gain is allocated to the data stream with the smallest error size; and c) the transmitter transmits new data or retransmits the data according to the feedback information.