Throughput performance of SAW-ARQ protocol with adaptive packet length in mobile packet data transmission

In a noncellular or large cell-size mobile radio communication system, log-normal shadowing as well as Rayleigh fading becomes the predominant source of system degradation. This paper proposes an efficient stop and wait automatic repeat request (SAW-ARQ) protocol with adaptive packet length to provide reliable mobile data packet transmission. The adaptive SAW-ARQ protocol controls the transmitting packet length according to the time-varying channel condition estimated with the number of ACK (acknowledgment packet) and NACK (negative-acknowledgment packet). Computer simulation results show that the proposed protocol can achieve high throughput and reduce the number of retransmission effectively for slow and fast Rayleigh fading/log-normal shadowing conditions.