Provided is a method supporting a Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) between a subscriber station and a base station in a broadband wireless access communication system. The method includes transmitting at least one HARQ enabled uplink burst from the subscriber station to the base station; generating ACKnowledgment/Negative ACKnowledgment (ACK/NACK) information according to the received HARQ enabled uplink burst at the base station; mapping the generated ACK/NACK information to a bitmap at the base station; and transmitting the bitmap through a downlink information from the base station to the subscriber station.