Feedback-collection packet for network coding

An apparatus for wireless communication at a user equipment, comprising:

• a memory;
• and
• at least one processor coupled to the memory and configured to:
• receive, from a network encoding device, a feedback collection network coding (FCNC) request for a subset of a plurality of transport blocks (TBs) for collecting feedback information regarding the subset of the plurality of TBs, the FCNC request being a network coding (NC) packet comprising a first indication that the NC packet is associated with an FCNC feedback configuration, the FCNC feedback configuration being different from a feedback configuration for NC packets that are not FCNC requests;
• and
• transmit, to the network encoding device, feedback associated with the FCNC request based on the FCNC feedback configuration.

A method for wireless communication at a network encoding device, comprising:

• receiving a plurality of indications for a plurality of transport blocks (TBs) for the network encoding device to retransmit;
• transmitting, to a plurality of user equipments (UEs), a feedback collection network coding (FCNC) request for a subset of the plurality of TBs for collecting feedback information regarding the subset of the plurality of TBs, the FCNC request being a network coding (NC) packet comprising a second indication that the NC packet is associated with an FCNC feedback configuration, the FCNC feedback configuration being different from a feedback configuration for NC packets that are not FCNC requests;
• receiving, from at least one of the plurality of UEs, feedback associated with the FCNC request based on the FCNC feedback configuration;
• and
• encoding, based on the received feedback, the plurality of TBs in at least one NC packet for transmission to the plurality of UEs.