Patent ID: 8625505

Claim:
A method for controlling transmission resources for transmission and re-transmission of packets of a plurality of automatic repeat request processes comprising: allocating, for each of the plurality of automatic repeat request processes, a transmission resource for transmission of a packet of the automatic repeat request process; using a contention-based scheduling strategy to allocate transmission resources as one or more re-transmission opportunities for re-transmission of the packet of at least two of the automatic repeat request processes such that at least two of the at least two automatic repeat request processes share a transmission resource for at least one of the re-transmission opportunities, wherein a collision arises if two or more of the at least two automatic repeat request processes that share the transmission resource for at least one of the retransmission opportunities use the shared transmission resource for transmission at the same time; transmitting at least one control message indicating the allocated transmission resources; grouping the plurality of automatic repeat request processes into a number of groups; and allocating transmission resources as re-transmission opportunities such that the automatic repeat request processes of the same group share transmission resource, and automatic repeat request processes that do not belong to the same group do not share transmission resource, wherein a first re-transmission opportunity precedes a second re-transmission opportunity, and the grouping step further comprises letting the number of groups associated with the first re-transmission opportunity be larger than the number of groups associated with the second re-transmission opportunity.