Turbo-coding in a communications system involves coding/decoding information in stages in order to avoid retransmission of a full L-bit packet upon occurrence of a packet error. In addition to a set of code bits generated by an encoder using a turbo-coding scheme, a punctured set of code bits is generated and stored in transmitter memory. The original set of code bits is transmitted as an L-bit data packet to a receiver which stores received data samples corresponding to the original set of code bits. The receiver decodes the data packet using a turbo-decoder and determines whether the data packet has been received in error. If so, the received data samples are maintained in memory, and a request for more information is made. Some or all of the punctured information is then forwarded from the transmitter to the receiver. A second stage of turbo-decoding combines the new data samples with the stored original received data samples such that there is a high likelihood that decoding is correct at this point, but additional stages of decoding may be used.
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