Patent ID: 7586930

Claim:
A communication method comprising: wirelessly transmitting a data packet from a first node to a plurality of second nodes defining a wireless multicast transmission; at each second node determining whether the data packet was received with errors and if so, respectively and synchronously transmitting a negative acknowledgement (NAK) to the first node in a common allocated NAK time slot for the second nodes so that the NAKs are received concurrently at the first node, wherein NAKs corresponding to a same data packet are the same and each of the NAKs comprises a pseudo-noise (PN) sequence signal; and at the first node retransmitting the data packet to the second nodes based upon receiving the NAK from any second node; wherein transmitting a NAK further comprises different second nodes staggering their respective NAK transmissions so as to ensure that the respective NAKs are received by the first node within the common allocated NAK time slot but at times differing by at least one symbol period of the PN sequence signal to prevent the respective NAKs from canceling each other.