Patent ID: 8265056

Claim:
An apparatus for H-ARQ transmission comprising: at least one processor configured to: receive a plurality of transmissions for a packet; determine a sliding window indicative of at least one start of packet (SOP) hypothesis for the packet, wherein the SOP hypothesis is determined for the packet based on an SOP decision and each SOP hypothesis may correspond to a different frame hypothesized to be the SOP of the packet and wherein the sliding window keeps track of SOP hypotheses for the packet; and decode the plurality of received transmissions based on the at least one SOP hypothesis for the packet; a memory coupled to the at least one processor; and wherein the at least one processor is configured to initialize said sliding window at an earliest received transmission among the plurality of received transmissions to move the sliding window forward for each subsequent received transmission until a SOP decision is made, and to maintain the sliding window at a received transmission where the SOP decision is made.