System and method for retransmissions in a wireless communications system

• US 9,252,926 B2
• Filed: 12/05/2012
• Issued: 02/02/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 03/06/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Original Assignee: Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
• Inventors: Larsson, Peter
• Primary Examiner(s): Torres, Joseph D
• Application Number:
  US13/705,494
• Publication Number:
  US 20130148569A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,154 Days
• Field of Search: 714748-751
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/15 Active relay systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0026 Transmission of channel quality indication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0076 Distributed coding, e.g. network coding, involving channel coding coding in both space and time H04L1/0618; cooperative diversity H04B7/022
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1607 Details of the supervisory signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1819 with retransmission of additional or different redundancy
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1825 Adaptation of specific ARQ protocol parameters according to transmission conditions
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1838 for semi-reliable protocols, e.g. for less sensitive applications such as streaming video buffer level management for video bitstream receiver H04N21/44004
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1845 Combining techniques, e.g. code combining
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/1848 Time-out mechanisms
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/20 using signal quality detector
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/22 using redundant apparatus to increase reliability
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2001/0097 Relays

Abstract

A method for a communications system, with a sender, which transmits data as packets to a receiver. The receiver transmits quality values to the sender representing the reception quality of packets received with errors. The receiver stores information regarding a number of received data packets, and there is a relay transceiver between the sender and the receiver. Both the relay transceiver and the sender can encode data packets into composite packets, M and to transmit composite packets to the receiver. Said stored information in the receiver comprises the data in correctly received packets and information regarding the reception quality of packets received with errors and the data of those packets, and the stored information is used by the receiver to decode composite packets, thereby extracting the data in the packets of the composite packets.

Claims

1. A receiving transceiver, comprising:

a receiver operative to receive a composite packet that is autonomously transmitted from a relay transceiver, wherein data packets are error correction encoded to form the composite packet and include a data packet the receiving transceiver has received with errors and a data packet the receiving transceiver has received without errors;

a transmitter operative to send to the relay transceiver quality values representative of a reception quality of data packets received with errors;

memory operative to store data packets and information associated with data packets received with errors; and

a controller operative to decode the composite packet to obtain the data packets,

wherein autonomously transmitted from a relay transceiver includes the relay transceiver being delegated an ability to determine whether to re-transmit the data packet the receiving transceiver has received with errors.

2. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the quality values comprise ARQ/HARQ NACK indications.

3. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the quality values comprise a Data Quality Indicator (DQI).

4. The transceiver of claim 3, wherein the DQI is a scalar value.

5. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the controller is operative to identify individual packets in the composite packet, and the data in those packets.

6. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the memory is operative to store at least one data packet received without error.

7. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the memory is operative to store soft information for a packet received with error.

8. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the memory is operative to store data packets and information about data packets received with errors for a limited duration.

9. The transceiver of claim 8, wherein the receiver is further operative to receive from a sending transceiver instructions on which data to store, and for what duration, or to discard.

10. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the data packets are linearly combined to form the composite packet.

11. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the controller is further operative to decode the composite packet using at least one of the stored data packets and the information associated with the data packets received with errors to obtain the data packets.

12. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein the memory is further operative to store a previously received composite packet, wherein the data packets of the previously received composite packet are a different linear combination of the data packets of the composite packet;

and

wherein the controller is further operative to decode the composite packet using the previously received composite packet to obtain the data packets.

13. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein autonomously transmitted from a relay transceiver includes the relay transceiver being delegated an ability to determine whether to re-transmit the data packet the receiving transceiver has not received with errors.

14. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein autonomously transmitted from a relay transceiver includes the relay transceiver being delegated an ability to determine how the data packets are error correction encoded to form the composite packet.

15. The transceiver of claim 1, wherein autonomously transmitted from a relay transceiver includes the relay transceiver being delegated an ability to determine which of the data packets are error correction encoded to form the composite packet.