Patent ID: 6931569

Claim:
A method for operating a mobile station to receive data from a base station across a wireless link of a cellular wireless communication system, the method comprising: performing physical layer operations on the mobile station by: receiving a physical layer frame from the base station across the wireless link; determining whether the physical layer frame is error free; when the physical layer frame is error free, sending an acknowledgment to the base station indicating a successful receipt, extracting a good packet data unit from the physical layer frame, and passing the good packet data unit to a upper layer operating on the mobile station; and when the physical layer frame is not error free, initiating physical layer Automatic Retransmission reQuest (ARQ) operations of the mobile station; and after a predetermined number of physical layer ARQ operation attempts, extracting a bad packet data unit from a corresponding physical layer frame and passing the bad packet data unit to the upper layer operating on the mobile station; performing upper layer operations on the mobile station by: operating upon a packet data unit received by the upper layer operating on the mobile station, including: when the packet data unit is a good packet data unit, operating upon the good packet data unit; and when the packet data unit is a bad packet data unit, initiating upper layer ARQ operations of the mobile station in an attempt to recover a corresponding good packet data unit; and monitoring the status of received packet data units, including: detecting that a packet data unit is lost: delaying upper layer ARQ operations of the mobile station for the lost packet data unit for a delay period corresponding to a duration of physical layer ARQ operations of the mobile station for the lost packet data unit; and after the delay period has expired, initiating upper layer ARQ operations of the mobile station for the lost packet data unit.