Physical layer packet retransmission handling in wcdma in soft handover

摘要

When employing HARQ in soft handover (SHO) in a mobile communication system, a mobile station (310) in communication with multiple base stations (350), (360), (370) is signaled by each of the base stations (350), (360), (370) when a packet sent by the mobile station (310) is correctly received. However, while one or more base stations (350), (360), (370) may have received the transmission correctly, others may not have, and retransmission may be called for. To address the possibility of having to resend such a packet, the mobile station (310) of the invention retransmits only if a selected number of the base stations (350, (360), (370) received the transmission correctly and does not if at least one base station received the original transmission correctly. The network is then able to retrieve the packet from one or more of the base stations (350), (360), (370) which have received it correctly and to supply it to another or others which have not.