Patent ID: 6996114

Claim:
A method for rate matching in equipment used in connection with a radio access network, the method using a rate-matching algorithm based on determining a starting parameter e ini , the method characterized by: a step of determining a characteristic distance D for an encoded block equal to the average distance between punctured bits for the encoded block when the average distance between punctured bits is greater than two, or equal to the average distance between transmitted bits when the average distance between punctured bits for the encoded block is less than two, or equal to two otherwise; and a step of determining a new value of the starting parameter e ini based on a cycling term having a value depending on a retransmission parameter R, the retransmission parameter R having a predetermined initial value for an original transmission and having different values for at least some subsequent retransmissions, the cycling term also depending on the characteristic distance D so as to never have a value exceeding a predetermined maximum value; thereby providing retransmission with incremental redundancy.