Patent ID: 8650448

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, at a receiving device, a packet from a transmitting device associated with the receiving device, the packet having a corruption; determining, by the receiving device, a cause of the corruption; wherein the cause of the corruption is an in-network packet collision if a preamble or channel training symbol associated with the packet are not associated with the transmitting device; wherein the cause of the corruption is a co-channel interference if a Medium Access Control (MAC) header is successfully decoded by analyzing soft bits corresponding to the MAC header of the received packet to confirm that a first consecutive group of the soft bits have first magnitudes that are smaller than second magnitudes associated with a second consecutive group; when the determined cause of the corruption is the in-network packet collision, allowing, by the receiving device, the transmitting device to send a retransmission of the packet in accordance with a contention-based access scheme; and when the determined cause of the corruption is the co-channel interference from one or more sources not associated with the receiving device, providing, by the receiving device, retransmission assistance to the transmitting device; wherein said providing retransmission assistance includes the receiving device reserving a channel for a retransmission of the packet by the transmitting device and/or providing one or more link adaptation suggestions to the transmitting device.