Patent ID: 7940712

Claim:
A method of encoding and scheduling data packets in a communication system, the communication system comprising at least one sending node and at least two receiving nodes, wherein the sending node is configured to buffer, schedule, encode, and transmit multicast data packets comprising information designated to K receiving nodes, where K>1, the method comprising: receiving at the sending node feedback information from each receiving node, said feedback information regarding the multicast data packets received by each receiving node and stored at each receiving node as a priori information; forming at the sending node a composite data packet based on previously transmitted multicast data packets using the received feedback information by: generating at least two different combinations of multicast data packets to form the composite data packet; evaluating an objective function representative of the expected multicast performance for each generated combination; selecting a generated combination that optimizes the objective function; and forming the composite data packet according to the selected combination; and transmitting from the sending node the composite data packet to the K receiving nodes.