Turbo code based incremental redundancy

A method for improving turbo code based incremental redundancy, the method comprising the steps of:

• puncturing a data stream for a first transmission to provide an orthogonal set of first unpunctured trellis sections;
• puncturing a data stream for a second transmission to provide an orthogonal set of second unpunctured trellis sections;
• and
• incremental redundancy combining the first and second transmissions of the trellises to provide uniformly patterned and non-adjacent first and second unpunctured trellis sections.

A turbo coder with improved incremental redundancy, comprising:

• a channel coder operable to code an input data stream into systematic bits and parity bits;
• a rate matching block coupled to the channel coder that matches the number of bits at the output of the channel coder to the total number of bits of available HS-DSCH physical channels, the rate matching block punctures a data stream for a first transmission to provide a set of first unpunctured trellis sections and punctures a data stream for a second transmission to provide a set of second unpunctured trellis sections;
• and
• a redundancy version selector coupled to the rate matching block, the redundancy version selector providing rate-matching parameters to the rate matching block, wherein the rate matching block provides incremental redundancy to combine the first and second transmissions of the trellises to provide non-adjacent first and second unpunctured trellis sections.