Patent ID: 7188300

Claim:
A radio communication apparatus, comprising: a physical layer portion and a higher layer portion coupled for communication therebetween; said physical layer portion including a radio block port for coupling to a physical radio channel, said radio block port for receiving a sequence of radio blocks that each include communication information associated with operations of said higher layer portion, each said radio block facilitating transmission of its associated communication information on the physical radio channel; said physical layer portion including a plurality of individually configurable transport channels coupled between said radio block port and said higher layer portion for interfacing between said radio block port and said higher layer portion, said transport channels collectively operable for one of producing said radio blocks in response to the associated communication information and extracting the associated communication information from said radio blocks, each of said transport channels including a configuration input for receiving transport format information associated with a current radio block of said sequence, said transport format information indicative of how the associated transport channel is to be configured with respect to said current radio block; and each said transport channel responsive to the associated transport format information for implementing one of an encoder and a decoder, and at least one of said transport channels responsive to the associated transport format information for implementing one of a data puncturer and a data repeater coupled to and co-operable with said one of an encoder and a decoder, said data puncture having an input for receiving a block of N bits, said data puncturer operable for puncturer the block to contain M bits by puncturing bits at positions bits at position J within the block, wherein J=floor(I*N/N−M)) for I=0, . . . N−M−1.