Patent ID: 8898550

Claim:
A data encoding method for encoding a sequence of N input blocks of bits into an output block for transmission, wherein each input block comprises one of a data block and a control block, the control block being one of K types of control block and including a block-type field indicating the type of that control block, the method comprising: adding an L-bit control indicator, indicating whether the sequence contains any control blocks, as a header to the sequence; and if the sequence contains any control blocks, producing the output block in which the order of data and control blocks in the sequence is preserved by deleting a set of bits from the block-type field of at least one control block, adding to the sequence an N-bit position indicator indicating positions of data and control blocks in the sequence, and providing in bit positions of remaining bits of the block-type field of the at least one control block an indication of the type of that control block; wherein the position indicator bits are added at bit-positions such that, in a header-first transmission order of the output block, all data and control blocks succeed the position indicator bits indicating positions of those blocks.