Patent ID: 7215683

Claim:
A method for protecting against packet losses in packet-oriented data transmission, comprising: storing n data packets in a memory together with end-of-packet information; transmitting the data packets from a transmitter to a receiver with a flag byte providing end-of-packet information at the end of each data packet; converting at the transmitter, after said transmitting of the data packets, the stored data packets into n equal-sized data packets, each having a length equal to a longest one of the data packets, by filling with known padding data and then converting the n equal-sized data packets into redundancy packets by coding; transmitting the equal-sized redundancy packets; obtaining reproduced data packets from received data packets including the end-of-packet information received from the transmitter by the receiver, if no packet has been lost during transmission; converting, if at least one packet is lost during the transmission and this error is correctable, all of the received data packets into equal-sized reconstructed data packets, by filling with the known padding data; and obtaining at the receiver, if at least one lost packet is not received and this error is correctable, the reproduced data packets from the equal-sized reconstructed data packets, the end-of-packet information and at least one equal-sized redundancy packet received from the transmitter to replace the at least one lost packet.