Patent ID: 7110351

Claim:
A method by a remote unit in a radio communication system which employs Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, the method comprising the steps of: receiving received OFDM symbols from a base station, each symbol including at least one packet, at least some symbols containing multiple packets, each packet including an address and a payload, the symbols collectively including packets addressed to the remote unit and packets addressed to other remote units; for each received symbol, determining whether a received symbol is a retransmitted symbol; if the received symbol is a retransmitted symbol and a stored symbol corresponding to the received symbol is stored at the remote unit, performing soft-combining of the received symbol and the stored symbol; determining whether the address of each packet corresponding to the received symbol can be determined reliably; if the address of a packet can be determined reliably, the further steps of: determining the address of the packet; determining whether the address of the packet indicates that the remote unit is an intended recipient of the packet; and if the remote unit is an intended recipient of the packet, the further steps of: determining whether there is an error in the payload of the packet; and if there is an error in the payload of the packet, the further steps of: signalling to the base station that the packet is to be retransmitted; and storing the received symbol in a buffer.