Patent ID: 8503479

Claim:
In a wireless communication apparatus comprising a protocol stack comprising a logical link control (LLC) layer and a radio link control (RLC) layer comprising an RLC entity, a method for transmitting RLC data blocks, comprising: (a) receiving at the RLC entity a first LLC protocol data units (PDU) formed by the LLC layer and corresponding to a first Packet Flow Context (PFC) and forming a first set of RLC data blocks corresponding to the first LLC PDU; (b) transmitting, using a Transport Block Flow (TBF), a subset of the first set of RLC data blocks formed by the RLC entity, wherein each transmitted RLC data block comprises at least a portion of the first LLC PDU, which portion has not previously been transmitted in an RLC data block; (c) after step (a), receiving at the RLC entity a second LLC PDU formed by the LLC layer and corresponding to a second PFC and forming a second set of RLC data blocks corresponding to the second LLC PDU; (d) after step (b), transmitting, using the TBF, all of the second set of RLC data blocks formed by the RLC entity, wherein each transmitted RLC data block comprises at least a portion of the second LLC PDU, which portion has not previously been transmitted in an RLC data block; (e) after step (d), transmitting, using the TBF, a remainder of the first set of RLC data blocks formed by the RLC entity but not transmitted in step (b), wherein each transmitted RLC data block comprises at least a portion of the first LLC PDU, which portion has not previously been transmitted in an RLC data block; (f) wherein each RLC data block transmitted in steps (b), (d) and (e) includes a block sequence number (BSN) field and the BSN field of each such RLC data block stores a value such that the values stored in the BSN fields of any two successive RLC data blocks experiencing a first transmission follow a predetermined sequential relationship independent of the TFI value indicated by those RLC data blocks.