Patent ID: 8599741

Claim:
A station in a mobile multihop relay network comprising: memory for storing a data structure, the data structure being a protocol data packet for communication in the mobile multihop relay network, the data structure comprising: a relay media access control (MAC) header, a payload and an optional cyclical redundancy checksum for a protocol data unit (PDU), in which the relay MAC header further comprises a header type field, a first reserved bit field, a relay mode indication field, a second reserved bit field, an extended subheader field, a third reserved bit field, a length field, a connection identifier field, and a header check sequence field, and wherein the five bits that immediately follow the relay mode indication bit constitute the second reserved field, wherein one of the reserved fields can indicate whether connection identifier encapsulation (CE) is used or not in the relay MAC PDU; and a transceiver for reading the relay mode indication field to determine whether the PDU is a relay MAC PDU or not, wherein the transceiver transmits the protocol data packet based on the determination.