Adaptive Space–Time Coding Using ARQ

We study the energy-limited outage probability of the block space-time coding (STC)-based systems utilizing automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. Taking the ARQ feedback costs into account, we derive closed-form solutions for the energy-limited optimal power allocation and investigate the diversity gain of different STC-ARQ schemes. In addition, sufficient conditions are derived for the usefulness of ARQ in terms of energy-limited outage probability. The results show that, for a large range of feedback costs, the energy efficiency is substantially improved by the combination of ARQ and STC techniques if optimal power allocation is utilized.