Patent ID: 7885289

Claim:
A method of communicating a message between nodes, each said node comprising a processor, the method comprising: identifying a primary message and at least one secondary message to be communicated from a transmitter using the processor of the transmitter, the primary message being designated for a first receiver node and the at least one secondary message being designated for a second receiver node; turbo-coding, using the processor of the transmitter, the primary message to form a turbo-coded primary message; turbo-coding, using the processor of the transmitter, each secondary message to form a turbo-coded secondary message; piggybacking, using the processor of the transmitter, the at least one turbo-coded secondary message onto the turbo-coded primary message to form a turbo-coded piggybacked message in response to a signal indicating that piggybacking of the at least one turbo-coded secondary message onto the turbo-coded primary message is possible, the signal being based at least in part on a characteristic of the first receiver node and the second receiver node relative to the transmitter node; and determining a scale factor based at least in part on a SNR of the first receiver node relative to the transmitter node and a SNR of the second receiver node relative to the transmitter node, wherein said piggybacking is further practiced by: scaling the at least one turbo-coded secondary message by the scale factor to form a scaled message; and summing the turbo-coded primary message and the scaled message.