A transport protocol that meets the requirements and performance for
multimedia data transfer in a wireless link includes a
transmitting/sending station and a receiving station. The inventive
protocol is referred to as the Burst-oriented Transport with Time-bounded
Retransmission (BTTR). This scheme uses a large transmission window for
sending/receiving a burst of time-sensitive data and, within this window,
several smaller observation windows are used for dynamic error
retransmission. There is a time limitation on each retransmission such
that the burst of data can be received in a timely manner, and thus
trading some packet losses (still in an acceptable range) for delay and
throughput performance. Specifically, the wireless network includes a
wireless station for transmitting data over a wireless link. The sending
station transmits a plurality of sequential data packets to the receiving
station, wherein each plurality of sequential data packets form a
respective Group-of-Packet (GOP). The receiving station detects whether
any of the received data packets in each current GOP are corrupted before
receipt of all data packets in the current GOP. The receiving station then
transmits a negative acknowledgement (ACK) packet to the sending station
before the receipt of all data packets in the current GOP, if at least one
data packet in the current GOP is corrupted. Note that the ACK packet
indicates which data packets are corrupted. In addition, the sending
station selectively retransmits the data packets based on the indication
of the received ACK packet before transmitting the next GOP to the
receiving station.