Patent ID: 8051200

Claim:
Nontransitory computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions embodied thereon that, when executed, facilitate a method of selecting two or more access terminals to participate in a multi-user packet (MUP) based communication, the method comprising: determining a plurality of candidate access terminals that might be included in said MUP-based communication, wherein the plurality of candidate access terminals are requesting the same content and are using the same data rate control; sending a probe packet to each of the plurality of candidate access terminals; for each of the plurality of candidate access terminals, recording a response to the probe packet; and prior to grouping two or more access terminals from the plurality of candidate access terminals to form a MUP-based group, characterizing hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) behavior of individual candidate access terminals from the plurality of candidate access terminals based on the responses to the probe packets, thereby providing characterizations of the HARQ behavior of the individual candidate access terminals; grouping two or more access terminals from the plurality of candidate access terminals to form a MUP-based group, wherein said grouping is based on the characterizations of the HARQ behavior of the individual candidate access terminals, wherein each of the two or more access terminals responds to the probe packet in the same way; and sending data to the MUP-based group using a MUP.