Patent ID: 7165209

Claim:
A method for encoding a data transmission of user data provided from a source, comprising: (a) measuring a communications channel to determine available time slots (time) and available bandwidth (frequency); (b) determining puncturing and shortening information from the available time slots and the available bandwidth, wherein puncturing information includes a number of bits p to be punctured and an identity of bits to be punctured and shortening information includes a number of bits s to be shortened and an identity of bits to be shortened; (c) receiving a K-bit data word at an encoder from the user data source; (d) shortening the K-bit data word by s bits prior to encoding to form a (K-s)-bit data word; (e) retaining the s shortened bits for later transmission; (f) encoding the (K-s)-bit data word into an (N-s)-bit code word, wherein N>K and N−(K-s) is a number of parity bits; and (g) performing puncturing operations on the (N-s)-bit code word to form an (N-s-p)-bit code word with (K-s) data bits, wherein puncturing is performed on a first dimension and shortening is performed on a second dimension.