A communication system employs a HARQ-type retransmission scheme. Bits (701) received on a first transmission are stored and combined with the bits received on later transmissions thereby increasing the likelihood of a correct decoding on later transmissions. Similarly the bits received on the second or later transmissions are stored for combining with subsequent received bits. Specific information needed at the receiver is identified and requested from the transmitter. More particularly, information that is retransmitted in a second or later transmission in the HARQ scheme is determined from a reliability of individual constituent bits in the mother codeword or from an overall reliability of the received codeword. Based on these reliability metrics, the most unreliable set of the constituent bits are requested or, in the alternative, a specific number of constituent bits is requested.
展开▼
