Patent ID: 7924761

Claim:
A wireless communications network comprising: a plurality of nodes forming a wireless network of transceivers, said plurality of nodes transmitting and receiving data packets, said data packets encoded by a error detection-correction encoding scheme at said plurality of nodes, said plurality of nodes comprising: at least one originating source node transmitting said encoded data packets, said source node transmitting a message consisting of a predetermined number of packet blocks forming a complete message; at least one destination node for receiving said encoded data packets; and at least one intermediate node part of said network to retransmit data packets, said intermediate node between said at least one originating source node and said at least one destination node, said at least one intermediate node: encoding said data packets received with said error detection-correcting encoding scheme, said encoding the data packets received for retransmission encodes the data packets for retransmission to be different from the encoded data packets received; receiving overheard packets from other nodes in said network; incorporating information in the overheard packets when retransmitting said data packets; and decoding and recovering the complete message prior to retransmission of said complete message, wherein said plurality of nodes incorporate said overheard packets in said transmission of said data packets.