The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 17, 2008
Filed:
Mar. 26, 2004
Anu Virtanen, Espoo, FI;
Esa Malkamāki, Espoo, FI;
Anu Virtanen, Espoo, FI;
Esa Malkamāki, Espoo, FI;
Spyder Navigations L.L.C., Wilmington, DE (US);
Abstract
The invention provides a method and apparatus for providing signaling in a communication link to a sending node and a receiving node using the hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol. The invention is characterized by the fact that the signalling contains a predetermined bit pattern that indicates whether control information in the current transmission can be used alone for decoding, or whether some part of the control information from an earlier transmission must also be used. The basic idea is to inform only with one bit ('TFCI flag'), whether the TFCI bits can be used for decoding the transport channel, using HARQ. If this bit is logical '1', then it means that current TFCI can be used for decoding, i.e. that the number of information bits for this transport format equals the number that is defined also originally when TFCI has been defined. Alternatively, if this one bit is logical '0', then it means that the receiving side has to assume the same number of information bits for this transport format as in the original transmission. Thus the number of information bits cannot be taken from the TFCI, when doing the decoding. Thus, typically, in the original transmission, the bit is logical “1”, in the retransmissions the bit is either logical “0” or “1”.