Patent ID: 7894468

Claim:
An automated repeat request (ARQ) transmission method of receiving a number of retransmissions of a multicast message that is based on a number of receivers of the multicast message comprising: receiving, in a network element, a plurality of retransmissions for an ARQ transmission of the multicast message based on a group size (S) of a group of the receivers if the group size equals or exceeds a threshold; and transmitting at least one of an acknowledgement (ACK) and a negative acknowledgement (NACK) to request further transmissions of the multicast message only after receiving the plurality of retransmissions if said group size (S) equals or exceeds a threshold (Th); transmitting one of an acknowledgment (ACK) and a negative acknowledgement (NACK) on an uplink channel to request further transmissions of the multicast message if the group size is smaller than the threshold.