Packet retransmission control using priority information

A data transmission apparatus for relaying data transmitted from the transmitting end in units of packets, each packet having additional information relating to its sequence number, priority, and data reproduction time, comprises: a receiving unit for receiving packets transmitted from the transmitting end; a priority decision unit for deciding the priority of each of the received packets; a retransmission packet storage unit for storing packets the priorities of which are equal to or higher than a predetermined value, as retransmission packets, on the basis of the priority of each packet decided by the priority decision unit; a retransmission instruction receiving unit for receiving a retransmission request from a terminal at the receiving end; a retransmission decision unit for deciding whether retransmission of the packet for which the retransmission request has been made should be performed or not, on the basis of the retransmission request and the storage status of the retransmission packets in the retransmission packet storage unit; a transmission queue management unit for setting the transmission order of the received packets and the packets which have been decided as packets to be retransmitted, on the basis of additional information which is given to each packet; and a transmission unit for transmitting the data of these packets in the transmission order set by the management unit. Therefore, the transmission quality in a radio section in real-time transmission is improved and, further, the number of retransmission times is reduced.