Patent ID: 8116271

Claim:
A method for communication, the method comprising: establishing a linking scheme between indices of a plurality of physical hybrid automatic repeat-request indicator channels (PHICHs), and a combination of indices of control channel elements (CCEs) and indices of demodulation reference signals (DMRSs); transmitting a scheduling grant from a first node to a second node by using a plurality of CCEs; in response to receiving a data packet and a DMRS from the second node, determining, at the first node, an index of a PHICH within the plurality of PHICHs based on at least one index of the CCEs used to transmit the scheduling grant, and an index of the received DMRS according to the established linking scheme; and transmitting, from the first node to the second node, an acknowledgement signal by using the PHICH corresponding to the determined index of the PHICH.