Patent ID: 7979770

Claim:
A method for controlling a transport format for retransmissions of data packets transmitted on uplink from a transmission apparatus to a receiving apparatus via at least one uplink data channel using a synchronous hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol, the method comprising: transmitting an uplink data packet via the uplink data channel from the transmission apparatus to the receiving apparatus, simultaneously receiving a first information element and a second information element from the receiving apparatus at the transmission apparatus, wherein the first information element is used for determination whether to perform a retransmission of the uplink data packet at the transmission apparatus, and the second information element indicates a transport format for the retransmission, and transmitting the retransmission from the transmission apparatus to the receiving apparatus according to the transport format indicated in the second information element using a synchronous transmission timing based on the synchronous HARQ protocol in case of the retransmission.