System and method for transmitting and receiving acknowledgement information

A method for transmitting multiple hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) responses, the method comprising:

• determining a first set of component carriers (CCs), wherein the first set of CCs comprises CCs over which no transmission is detected;
• determining a second set of CCs, which does not contain any CC in the first set of CCs;
• assigning a set of bits of an information vector to a fixed vector value, wherein the fixed vector value is according to the first set of CCs;
• assigning remaining bits in the information vector to values according to the second set of CCs;
• encoding the information vector;
• and
• transmitting the encoded information vector.

A communications device comprising:

• a response unit configured to determine a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) response for each transport block (TB) of each component carrier (CC) in a first set of CCs configured by higher layer signaling assigned to the communications device;
• a mapper coupled to the response unit, the mapper configured to generate an information vector from HARQ responses produced by the response unit and the first set of CCs, wherein a sub-vector composed of one or more bits selected from the information vector is assigned a fixed vector value if no transmission is detected over at least one CC in a second set of CCs when the second set of CCs is not empty, the second set of CCs being a subset of the first set of CCs, the sub-vector being fixed vector value regardless of HARQ responses for CCs not in the second set of CCs;
• and
• an encoder coupled to the mapper, the encoder configured to encode the information vector.