TRANSMISSION CONTROL METHOD IN A RADIO ACCESS NETWORK IMPLEMENTING AN AUTOMATIC REPETITION REQUEST (AQR) PROTOCOL AT THE BASE STATION (AQR)

摘要

A method of controlling the sending of data packets from a Base Station (BS) of a Radio Access Network (RAN) to a UE, where the BS is one of a set of BSs transmitting identical data to the UE and each said data packet has a sequence number. The method comprises implementing at the BS an Automatic Repetition reQuest (ARQ) mechanism for resending data packets erroneously received by the UE and, upon receipt of an ARQ status message from the UE, advancing a transmission window of the BS so that its lower region covers the packet having the highest sequence number for which an ARQ acknowledgement has nor yet been received. Where a single BS is transmitting in the downlink direction, and a soft handover set exists for an uplink reverse channel, downlink sending buffers of the BSs of the soft handover set may be synchronised by the exchange of ARQ messages between BSs.