Performance analysis of Stop-and-Wait ARQ for wireless channels

ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) is used to ensure a reliable communication between transmitter and receiver over an error-prone channel. When the transmitter sends a data packet over the channel to the receiver, a transmission error may occur depending on the condition of the channel. The receiver checks the integrity of the packet and notifies the transmitter by returning a NACK in case of erroneous transmission or an ACK otherwise. If necessary, the packet is retransmitted a number of times until it is received correctly. We present the analysis of the Stop-and-Wait ARQ protocol in case the channel produces errors in a bursty, correlated manner. Indeed, especially in the case of wireless communications with mobile transmitters and receivers, it is expected that the conditions of the wireless medium are not static but change over time. Our results show that the performance of the transmitter buffer rapidly deteriorates for higher error correlation. Keywords—Discrete-time queueing, ARQ, wireless communication, error control