Patent ID: 7409630

Claim:
A method for data communication, comprising: encoding a data packet to form an encoded forward error correction (FEC) data block; applying a first puncture pattern to the encoded FEC data block to form a first punctured FEC data block; transmitting the first punctured FEC data block over a transmission link to a receiver; checking the received first punctured FEC data block at the receiver to determine whether the data packet embedded in the received first punctured FEC data block has a uncorrectable error; requesting a retransmission when there is at least one uncorrectable error in the data packet embedded in the received first punctured FEC data block; applying a second, different puncture pattern to the encoded FEC data block to form a second punctured FEC data block; transmitting the second punctured FEC data block over the transmission link to the receiver; combining the first and the second punctured FEC data blocks to form a combined data block; and decoding the combined data block to extract the embedded data packet.