Retransmission Spurts of Deferred NAK ARQ in Fountain Coding Aided CCSDS File-Delivery Protocol

We propose a fountain coding aided CCSDS file-delivery protocol (FCFDP) and analyze its deferred negative acknowledgment (NAK) automatic repeat-request (ARQ) scheme. For ideal fountain codes, an expression for the expected number of retransmission spurts in the FCFDP is derived. The analytical and simulation results show that the expected number of retransmission spurts decreases with the increase of redundant packets. If there are sufficient redundant packets, the expected number of retransmission spurts is close to zero. Therefore, the delays introduced by propagation in deep space communications are dramatically reduced.