AUTOMATIC REQUEST PROTOCOL BASED PACKET TRANSMISSION USING PUNCTURED CODES

Methods and systems for automatic request and repetition with interference stability, providing non-uniform and adaptive data protection from interference for fixed length packet communication systems. At the transmitter a fixed block size data transmission method is provided in which a subset of a non-systematic component of a previous error correction encoded block (3A-2) is inserted into punctured symbol locations of at least one future encoded block (3A-6). The block thus generated is then transmitted (3A-7). At the receiver, a data reception method is provided for receiving blocks generated using the above data transmission method. At a receiver, a received block is separated into symbols of a current block and symbols of a re-request block contained in punctured symbol locations of the received block (4-2), the re- request block containing non-systematic symbols of a previous block. Next, the symbols of the current block are decoded (4-5). The symbols of the re-request block are combined with a previous version of the previous block to produce a new version of the previous block and this new version of the previous block is ten decoded (4-8).