Patent ID: 7360141

Claim:
A method for hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) data transmission, the method comprising the steps of: transmitting a data packet; transmitting a repeat data packet in response to an automatic repeat request, wherein the data packet and repeat data packet are at least partially identical, and each form part of a respective channel-coded bit stream; performing a bit selection process to select bits for further transmission in at least one of the data packet and the repeat data packet; subjecting bits for further transmission to a bit rate matching process, wherein the bit rate matching process comprises the steps of: separating bits from each respective channel-coded bit stream into at least a first bit stream and a second parallel bit stream, and determining if any bit streams are selected for exclusive further transmission in relation to the data packet and the repeat data packet; performing a separate bit rate matching process on each of the individual bit streams, wherein bits of the first bit stream are used unchanged for a data packet for further transmission, and bits of the second bit stream are used for padding the data packet for further transmission, if the first bit stream is selected for exclusive further transmission, and bits of the second bit stream are used unchanged for a repeat data packet and bits of the first bit stream are used for padding the repeat data packet, if the second bit stream is selected for exclusive further transmission.