Patent ID: 8908496

Claim:
A method of performing incremental redundancy (IR) transmission in a wireless multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, comprising: obtaining a selected rate for data transmission on a MIMO channel between a plurality of transmit antennas and a plurality of receive antennas, the selected rate indicating a particular data rate, or a particular coding scheme, or a particular code rate, or a particular modulation scheme, or a particular data packet size, or a combination thereof; encoding a data packet in accordance with the selected rate to obtain a coded packet; processing the coded packet to obtain a plurality of symbol blocks, each symbol block being generated based on a different portion of the coded packet; transmitting a first symbol block of the plurality of symbol blocks from the plurality of transmit antennas to the plurality of receive antennas; and transmitting a second symbol block of the plurality of symbol blocks from the plurality of transmit antennas to the plurality of receive antennas, wherein the second symbol block is generated based on a different portion of the coded packet than the first symbol block, and wherein the plurality of symbol blocks are selected for transmission, one symbol block at a time, until an acknowledgement (ACK) is received for the data packet or all of the plurality of symbol blocks are transmitted, and wherein the second symbol block is selected for transmission when the ACK is not received for the data packet.