Signalling method in an incremental redundancy communication system whereby data blocks can be combined

摘要

The present invention proposes a method of signaling which data blocks can be combined together in an incremental redundancy communication system consisting of a transmitter device and a receiver device, the method comprising the steps of: transmitting said blocks from a transmitter device to a receiver device, with each transmitted data block including an information indicating whether a respective data block is transmitted for a first time or is a retransmitted block; checking, at said receiver device, whether the transmission of a respective data block has failed; requesting a retransmission of said data block from the transmitter device if said transmission of said respective block has failed, and in response to receiving said retransmission request at the transmitter device side, setting said information to a value indicating that said respective data block is a retransmitted block, and adding at least one header to said data block to be retransmitted, said header representing a reference to a physical location of an earlier transmission of said block in a sequence of transmitted blocks. By virtue of the proposed method and accordingly adapted transmitter and receiver devices of a corresponding communication system, transmitting of a block number within a respective data block can be dispensed with, thereby reducing an overhead of transmitted data and increasing user data throughput in the communication system.