Methods and systems for HARQ protocols

A method for acknowledging a DL HARQ transmission comprising:

• receiving an encoder packet;
• if the encoder packet is successfully decoded, transmitting an acknowledgement (ACK);
• if the encoder packet is not successfully decoded, transmitting a negative acknowledgement (NAK);
• if no retransmission is received within a predetermined time period of transmitting the NAK, transmitting a NULL indicating that no control information signaling pertaining to the retransmission has been received.

A method of error recovery for a UL HARQ transmission comprising:

• if a NULL is received in response to a previously transmitted sub-packet of an encoder packet that is a first sub-packet transmission;
• dynamically scheduling a retransmission of the first sub-packet transmission at any time;
• retransmitting the first sub-packet transmission, the first sub-packet transmission comprising control information signaling sent in a first sub-packet transmission;
• if a NULL is received in response to a previously transmitted sub-packet of an encoder packet that is a subsequent sub-packet transmission to a first sub-packet transmission;
• scheduling a retransmission of the first sub-packet transmission at a predetermined time;
• retransmitting the subsequent sub-packet transmission, the subsequent sub-packet transmission comprising control signaling information that comprises:
• information to uniquely identify the HARQ process;
• and
• an identification of one of a time resource, a frequency resource and a time and frequency resource that is allocated for the subsequent sub-packet transmission.

A method comprising:

• in a system having a known HARQ acknowledgement (ACK) delay, retransmit delay and number of HARQ interlaces, which are each defined in configuration signaling sent to a mobile station and which are a function of at least one of a time division duplexing downlink/uplink (TDD DL/UL) ratio and a frequency division duplexing downlink/uplink (FDD DL/UL) ratio,
• at a base station, determining the timing for receiving an ACK/NAK from a mobile station based on configuration signaling in response to a previously sent transmission of an encoder packet by the base station;
• and
• at a mobile station, determining the timing for receiving one of a transmission and a retransmission of a sub-packet of an encoder packet from a base station based on the configuration signaling in response to a previously sent NAK by the mobile station.