the following description of the presently contemplated best mode of practicing the invention is not to be taken in a limiting sense , but is made merely for the purpose of describing the general principles of the invention . the scope of the invention should be determined with reference to the claims . referring first to fig1 shown is a block diagram of a satellite communications system 10 , including a wireless transceiver 12 , a satellite relay station 14 ( or satellite link ) and a gateway / network 16 . when the gateway / network 16 sends information to the wireless transceiver 12 via the satellite link 14 , as mentioned above , a delay of about 540 milliseconds is introduced in propagating information from the gateway / network 16 to the satellite link 14 and from the satellite link 14 to the wireless transceiver 12 . as a result , prior art “ go - back - n ” reject protocol approaches operate in a less than optimal manner in that by the time a defective frame is received at the wireless transceiver 12 and the wireless transceiver 12 determines that the defective frame includes one or more errors , several other frames have already been transmitted by the gateway / network 16 . as a result , even though these frames may be error free , once a “ go - back - n ” reject protocol message has been sent from the wireless transceiver 12 to the gateway / network 16 , incurring further delay , and resulting in the transmission of further frames by the gateway / network 16 in the meantime , the gateway / network 16 must go back to the defective frame , and retransmit it , and all frames that follow it . as a result , a great deal of unnecessary retransmission is required . another approach to reject protocol implementation in a satellite system is selective reject . as mentioned above , however , selective reject allows the wireless transceiver to signal the gateway / network 16 to resend any frame . thus , if frames 4 , 7 and 10 in a group of frames are determined by the wireless transceiver 12 to be defective , the wireless transceiver 12 can signal the gateway / network 16 to resend frames 4 , 7 and 10 using three separate selective reject protocol messages . similarly , if frames 1 , 2 and 3 of the group of frames are defective , three separate selective reject protocol messages are sent by the wireless transceiver 12 to the gateway / network 16 in accordance with the selective reject approach . in the “ go - back - n ” procedure , on detection of a defective frame , the wireless transceiver 12 sends acknowledgement to all frames that are received in sequence , and requests retransmission of the defective frame and all subsequent frames . subsequent frames are not acknowledged until they have been successfully resent , even if there were no errors in their original transmission . as mentioned above , this wastes time , bandwidth , and delays receipt of the entire group of frames . selective reject is used by the data link layer entity to request retransmission of single frames . the selective reject approach may or may not incorporate the acknowledgement in accordance with whether a particular bit is sent within a control channel . each selective reject condition is cleared upon successful receipt of the particular frame for which retransmission is requested . a data link layer entity may transmit one or more selective reject frames , each containing a different frame identifier . frames that may have been following ( or between ) the frames indicated by the selective reject ( with selective rejects ) will not be retransmitted as a result of the gateway / network 16 having received the selective reject . thus , by reducing the number of needlessly retransmitted frames , selective reject improves the efficiency of the datalink , while recovering missing frames . to fully realize this advantage , however , the wireless transceiver 12 having missed a frame , i . e ., received a defective frame , should buffer subsequent frames until the missing frame is received . this generally imposes additional buffering and house keeping requirements on the receiving side . one limitation of the selective reject error recovery procedure is that it requires the wireless transceiver 12 to send a selective reject frame for each lost or defective frame . in some cases , selective reject is more advantageous , and in others “ go - back - n ” is a more appropriate approach . in implementation , it becomes difficult for the data link layer to make a decision as to which one of theses two approaches should be used in a given case . due to the limitations of selective reject and built inefficiency of “ go - back - n ”, the desired solution for a recovery in satellite networks is to use a novel approach , as described below , referred to herein as group reject . group reject provides , in a single frame , a request for retransmission of a range of lost frames with acknowledgement . in this scheme wireless transceiver 12 need not decide whether to use “ go - back - n ” or selective reject . in the examples discussed below , the wireless transceiver 12 can send a single reject message with an indication of retransmission of a range of lost frames or with acknowledgement of a single lost frame , frame without acknowledgement . the gateway / network 16 , upon receipt of a group reject frame , updates its window and retransmits all requested frames . ( note that the group reject approach described herein works equally well when the wireless transceiver 12 is the sender and the gateway / network 16 is the receiver , as when the wireless transceiver 12 is the receiver and the gateway / network 16 is the sender , the latter at which is described herein . referring next to fig2 shown is a schematic representation of a group of frames , with defective or lost frames being indicated as open squares and successfully received frames being indicated as cross - hatched squares . if the wireless transceiver 12 detects an error in consecutive frames near the beginning of a group of frames , as shown , in accordance with selective reject protocol , the wireless transceiver 12 would generate a selective reject message for each of the lost frames . if the datalink layer utilizes the group reject approach in accordance with the embodiment described herein , it sends a single group reject frame for retransmission of the range of frames one through three , shown . referring next to fig3 another example is shown in a schematic diagram wherein a group of frames successfully received are indicated with cross - hatched squares and a group of defective or lost frames are indicated as open squares . a darkened square indicates a frame not ever received . thus , shown , if the wireless transceiver detects an error at the end of its receive buffer , the wireless transceiver issues a group reject for recovery of the lost frames , in this case , frames twelve , thirteen , fourteen and an acknowledgement up to frame 11 . referring next to fig4 a diagram is shown in which cross - hatch squares indicating received frames , and open squares indicating erroneous or lost frames . darkened frames indicate frames yet to be received . if the wireless transceiver detects an exception error or between a start and an end of receive buffers , and if this reception error involves more than one frame , the wireless transceiver can request a retransmission of the frames , in the example shown , frames three , seven and twelve . the wireless transceiver would acknowledge up to frame 2 in the instances shown . referring next to fig5 a diagram is shown in which cross - hatched squares are received frames , open squares represent erroneous or lost frames , and darkened squares indicate frames that are yet to be received . if the wireless transceiver detects an exception between the start and end of its receive buffers , in the case with the group reject only one frame is required to recover each group of lost frames . in the examples shown , frames two through fourteen could be requested with a single group reject message . in the example shown above , a window size of 15 frames is selected in the data link layer . this means that the gateway / network 16 can send fifteen messages without waiting for acknowledgement . in addition , only one layer three message can be transmitted by the data link layer . the use information in the tch 3 is seven bytes so a layer three message of size 120 ( 15 × 8 ) can be transmitted without waiting for acknowledgement . with a given round - trip delay of 540 milliseconds ( 270 × 2 ) and 150 milliseconds processing time in the wireless transceiver , the sender should expect response from the receiver at the end of 690 milliseconds ( 540 = 150 ) or about 700 milliseconds . this means the sender should be able to receive a response from the receiver at the end of the fourth message of a subsequent window . since a window has a size of 15 frames , this is sufficient to assure that acknowledgement is received before the end of the subsequent frame . in the case of sms services , the maximum size of a sms message is 256 bytes . this message requires 37 ( 256 / 7 ) frames to transmit . with a window size of 15 frames ( messages ), the sender will stop transmitting at the end of 15 frames ( if the receiver does not send any response ). the receiver shall respond within the first four messages of the subsequent window . in the event the gateway / network 16 does not receive a response from the receiver by the end of the 15th message of the subsequent window , the gateway / network concludes that something is in error at the receiver , and responds accordingly by , for example , retransmitting all of the frames of the window . while the invention herein disclosed has been described by means of specific embodiments and applications thereof , numerous modifications and variations could be made thereto by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope of the invention set forth in the claims .