Performance analysis of a cross-layered incremental redundancy hybrid automatic repeat request (CL IR-HARQ) mechanism

The performance of Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) in wireless networks has been extensively studied in recent years. Most of the HARQ performance results reported in the literature have been based on cross-layer techniques making use of Media Access Control (MAC) and physical layer information. In contrast, we present a performance analysis of a cross-layer approach that uses MAC and Internet Protocol (IP) layer information to efficiently control packet retransmissions in wireless networks. Evaluation results (using performance metrics such as packet error rate, retransmission efficiency, delay) obtained at the IP layer, using a two-state Gilbert Elliott channel model, demonstrate the significant performance improvements of the (MAC-IP) cross-layer strategy.