Patent ID: 7813324

Claim:
A first node for transmitting data messages to receiving nodes, comprising: a transceiver; a control circuit configured to operate the transceiver according to an automatic retransmit request protocol for unicast, multicast, and broadcast transmissions, wherein the control circuit is configured to transmit a request for acknowledgement with a data message to indicate that one or more of the receiving nodes should acknowledge successful receipt of the data message, wherein the request for acknowledgement comprises information that indicates whether the transmission is a unicast transmission, a multicast transmission, or a broadcast transmission and also indicates which receiving nodes should respond to the request for acknowledgement, wherein when the transmission is a broadcast or multicast transmission, the information includes a broadcast address or multicast address, wherein the broadcast address or multicast address includes a setting that indicates that all neighbor nodes should respond to the request for acknowledgement, wherein the control circuit: receives an acknowledgement code bit map from a second node of the receiving nodes in response to the transmission of the transmitted data message, wherein the data message comprises a plurality of data cells, wherein the control circuit; conducts an automatic retransmit request protocol in a first mode of operation in which each bit of the acknowledgement code bit map acknowledges a single data cell; conducts the automatic retransmit request protocol in a second mode of operation in which each bit of a received acknowledgement code bit map acknowledges a group of data cells of a received set of data cells; and changes to the second mode of operation when the forward error correction protocol block size is greater than one data cell and less than the size of a full transmission slot.