Incremental redundancy radio link protocol

Claim 2

A receiving Incremental Redundancy Radio Link Protocol module (receiving IRLP module) for a receiver, comprising: a receive transport module that receives soft decision information from a layer 1 protocol; a quantizer that converts the soft-decision information into a q level representation, where q is a design parameter that trades off receiver memory requirements against system performance and where, for a q level quantization, the memory requirements at the receiver per bit are given by log 2 q; a decoder that receives at least the q level representation of the soft decision information and decodes the at least the q level representation of the soft decision information to yield a decoded data block, wherein the decoded data block comprises error detection bits of a frame check sequence and a service data unit (SDU); a frame check sequence decoder that computes a frame check sequence of the SDU and indicates to the receiving IRLP module whether the SDU passed the frame check; and a deblocking module that constructs a deliverable data block by de-concatenating the SDU and the frame check sequence, wherein the de-concatenated SDU is the deliverable data block.

Claim 3

The receiving Incremental Redundancy Radio Link Protocol module of claim 1 , wherein the decoder uses a soft decision Viterbi algorithm.

Claim 6

The method of claim 3 , wherein the sub-block information portion comprises data having no redundancy and representing a 1:1 mapping to a blocked service data unit (SDU), wherein a blocked SDU is comprised of a first series of bits concatenated with error detection bits generated for the first series of bits.

Claim 7

The method of claim 3 , wherein the flag in the table is identified by both the block sequence number and the sub-block sequence number.

Claim 8

A computer system comprising a processor and a memory, the memory containing instructions to be executed in accordance with the method of claim 3 .

Claim 11

The method of claim 7 , further comprising setting a flag in a field in the table, the field identified by the block sequence number, to indicate that the data block identified by the block sequence number is successfully decoded.

Claim 12

The method according to claim 8 , further comprising delivering the data block to a network layer.

Claim 13

The method according to claim 9 , further comprising deleting all entries in the table corresponding to the block sequence number of the delivered data block.

Claim 14

The method according to claim 7 , further comprising computing a state feedback packet, wherein the state feedback packet provides state information for the table.

Claim 17

The method of claim 12 , further comprising setting a flag in the second field to indicate that the block corresponding to the block sequence number was correctly decoded.

Claim 18

The method of claim 12 , wherein the one of the data and parity sub-blocks comprise a sub-block having no redundancy and representing a 1:1 mapping to a blocked service data unit (SDU), wherein a blocked SDU is comprised of a first series of bits concatenated with error detection bits generated for the first series of bits.

Claim 19

The method of claim 12 , further comprising discarding the PDU if the first frame check sequence fails.

Claim 20

The method of claim 12 , further comprising discarding the PDU if, after verifying the first frame check sequence, the second field of the table contains a value that indicates that the block corresponding to the block sequence number was correctly decoded.

Claim 21

The method of claim 12 , further comprising delivering the decoded blocks of each entry in the table having a flag set in the second field to indicate that the block corresponding to the block sequence number was correctly decoded.

Claim 22

The method of claim 17 , further comprising deleting all entries in the table corresponding to all delivered blocks.

Claim 23

The method of claim 12 , further comprising computing a feedback packet, wherein the feedback packet includes state feedback information of the table.

Claim 24

A receiver for receiving data transmitted on a physical layer under an incremental redundancy protocol, comprising: a processor; and a memory, wherein the memory comprises: a data structure that stores received sub-blocks and decoded blocks until they can be delivered in sequence to a network layer, the data structure comprising: a first field that stores a block sequence number; a second field that stores an indication as to whether a block corresponding to the block sequence number was correctly decoded; a first plurality of fields storing an indication as to whether data sub-blocks of the block corresponding to the block sequence number have been received; a second plurality storing an indication as to whether parity sub-blocks of the block corresponding to the block sequence number have been received; a data field that stores soft-decision data and parity sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number; and a set of instructions, the set of instructions causing the processor to: retrieve a PDU, wherein the PDU includes a header and one of a data and a parity sub-block, wherein data in the sub-block is in a form of soft-decision bits; decode the header, wherein the header includes the block sequence number, a sub-block sequence number, and a frame check sequence; verify the frame check sequence and if the frame check sequence passes: set a flag in one of the first plurality of fields and the second plurality of fields, wherein the flag identifies, by virtue of the sub-block sequence number, which one of the data sub-blocks and parity sub-blocks were received; quantize the soft decision bits of the one of the data and parity sub-blocks to yield a quantized soft-information sub-block; store the quantized soft-information sub-block at a location corresponding to the block sequence number and the sub-block sequence number; pass all quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number to a decoder; decode, at the decoder, all passed quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number to yield a decoded block; and compute a second frame check sequence of the decoded block, and if the second frame check sequence passes, store the decoded block in place of all quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number.

Claim 25

A receiver for receiving data transmitted on a physical layer under an incremental redundancy protocol, comprising: a processor; and a memory, wherein the memory comprises: a data structure that stores received sub-blocks and decoded blocks until they can be delivered in sequence to a network layer, the data structure comprising: a first field that stores a block sequence number; a second field that stores an indication as to whether a block corresponding to the block sequence number was correctly decoded; a first plurality of fields storing an indication as to whether data sub-blocks of the block corresponding to the block sequence number have been received; a second plurality storing an indication as to whether parity sub-blocks of the block corresponding to the block sequence number have been received; a data field that stores soft-decision data and parity sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number; and a set of instructions, the set of instructions causing the processor to: retrieve a PDU, wherein the PDU includes a header and one of a data and a parity sub-block, wherein data in the sub-block is in a form of soft-decision bits; decode the header, wherein the header includes the block sequence number, a sub-block sequence number, and a frame check sequence; verify the frame check sequence and if the frame check sequence passes: set a flag in one of the first plurality of fields and the second plurality of fields, wherein the flag identifies, by virtue of the sub-block sequence number, which one of the data sub-blocks and parity sub-blocks were received; quantize the soft decision bits of the one of the data and parity sub-blocks to yield a quantized soft-information sub-block; store the quantized soft-information sub-block at a location corresponding to the block sequence number and the sub-block sequence number; pass all quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number to a decoder; decode, at the decoder, all passed quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number to yield a decoded block; and compute a second frame check sequence of the decoded block, and if the second frame check sequence passes, store the decoded block in place of all quantized soft-information sub-blocks corresponding to the block sequence number.