Adaptive Cross-Packet HARQ

In this paper, we investigate a coding strategy devised to increase the throughput in hybrid ARQ (HARQ) transmission over a block fading channel. In our approach, the transmitter jointly encodes a variable number of bits for the each round of HARQ. The parameters (rates) of this joint coding can vary and may be based on the negative acknowledgment provided by the receiver or, on the past (outdated) information about the channel states. These new degrees of freedom allow us to improve the match between the codebook and the channel states experienced by the receiver. The results indicate that gains obtained using the proposed cross-packet coding strategy are particularly notable for the large values of the throughput. In this region, the conventional HARQ fails to offer throughput improvement even if the number of transmission rounds is increased. We implement the proposed cross-packet HARQ using turbo codes, where we show that the theoretically predicted throughput gains materialize in practice; the implementation challenges are also discussed.