Patent ID: 7318187

Claim:
An outercoding entity provided above the Radio Link Control (RLC) layer, comprising: a destination station that includes a receiver; a origination station that includes a transmitter that communicates with the receiver over the radio interface via a common logical channel; wherein the transmitter comprises: a first buffer for storing rows of user information; a scheduling unit that determines a maximum duration before an outer code block needs to be transmitted and determines based on an amount of user information stored in the first buffer an optimal size for information blocks that allows the rows of user information to occupy the information blocks such that unfilled portions of the information blocks are reduced, and generates a request to start encoding the rows of user information; a segmentation and concatenation unit that, in response to a request from the scheduling unit, divides the rows of user information to fit into the information blocks having the optimal size and generates length indicators within each information block that indicate the end of a row of user information relative to that information block; and an outer encoder that uses the information blocks to generate redundancy blocks that are added to the information blocks to produce an outer code block.