A METHOD AND RECEIVER FOR BUFFERING DATA EMPLOYING HARQ AND TWO-STAGE RATE MATCHING

摘要

A method and receiver for buffering data at the receiver of a packet transmission communication system employing hybrid ARQ types II/III and adaptive coding and modulation schemes, wherein the adaptive coding is performed by a two-stage rate matching algorithm. The invention underlies two principal ideas. The first one is based on the recognition that the buffer for storing the incoming data bit stream is only needed temporarily until the first de-rate mapping operation is completed. It can therefore be used afterwards for storing the data bits obtained upon completion of the second de-rate matching operation. This approach helps to reduce the required buffer size at the receiver and also reduces its complexity. The second idea is to utilize the separation of the data bit streams into a plurality of data bit substreams and to input at least one data bit substreams to the decoder without performing a second de-rate matching and storing operation. This is based on the consideration that the decoder may access at least one of the data bit substreams directly from the HARQ buffer. Consequently, the size of the temporary buffer can be reduced also resulting in simplifying the receiver.