Patent ID: 8296617

Claim:
A method for implementation of HARQ between a transmitting node and a receiving node in a communication network wherein HARQ data packets associated with one or more HARQ processes are transmitted using allocated resources, each HARQ process comprising a transmission of one or more new or retransmitted HARQ packets having a common destination, the method comprising, for at least one user selected for a scheduling instance: (a) appending one or more new candidate HARQ processes to a group of candidates that are queued for possible instantiation, said appending being permitted even if there are older processes with data waiting to be retransmitted; (b) ranking two or more processes queued for that user, said ranking carried out by applying a policy which can deviate from first-in-first-out processing of packets by permitting fresh HARQ processes to be instantiated ahead of HARQ processes awaiting retransmission; and (c) selecting one or more of the highest ranked HARQ processes for instantiation in the scheduling instance using allocated resources.