Patent ID: 8254315

Claim:
A method for handling Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) retransmission failure, from a transmitter to a receiver, the method comprising the steps of: determining said HARQ retransmission failure by whether a maximum number of MAC protocol data units have not been received; upon said HARQ retransmission failure determining whether an out-of-coverage condition is indicated, wherein the out-of-coverage condition is determined: by checking whether a time between a channel quality indicator (CQI) was last received and the HARQ retransmission failure is longer than a threshold; or if a number of consecutive failures in reception of an acknowledgement, (ACK), or negative acknowledgement (NACK), from the receiver exceeds a configurable threshold value; if an out of coverage condition is determined, ending the retransmission process; and if an out of coverage condition is not determined, checking whether changes to HARQ data transmission error performance characteristics are greater than a threshold, and a deterioration of channel conditions is less than a threshold; if yes, resegmenting for retransmission Radio Link Control Protocol Data Units (RLC-PDU) data into smaller PDU data sizes; and transmitting said resegmented RLC-PDU data; and if not yes, retransmitting the previous RLC-PDU data.