Patent ID: 8879447

Claim:
A method comprising: a wireless-communication device receiving downlink transport blocks and responsively transmitting corresponding acknowledgement messages via a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH); the wireless-communication device making a PUCCH-compromised determination, wherein making the PUCCH-compromised determination comprises making a determination that a number of received retransmitted downlink transport blocks exceeds a retransmitted-block threshold, the wireless-communication device having previously transmitted, via the PUCCH, acknowledgement messages corresponding to prior transmissions of the received retransmitted downlink transport blocks; and responsive to making the PUCCH-compromised determination, the wireless-communication device: transmitting a scheduling-request message via a random access channel (RACH) and obtaining a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) scheduling grant, accessing pseudo uplink data, annexing uplink-feedback data to the pseudo uplink data, and transmitting the pseudo uplink data and annexed uplink-feedback data via the PUSCH in accordance with the obtained PUSCH scheduling grant.