Efficient partial retransmission ARQ strategy with error detection codes by feedback channel

The paper presents and analyses a new partial retransmission ARQ strategy (PRAS) which uses error detection in the feedback direction to enable the transmitter to pinpoint and repeat only an individually errored subblock resulting in more efficient use of a communication channel. The scheme also increases the probability of successful retransmission and provides an adaptive overhead. The throughput analysis shows a substantial improvement over a conventional selective repeat ARQ system. A practical implementation (selective cell retransmission (SCR)) demonstrates the technique over an asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) satellite link using hybrid ARQ to provide selective retransmission (i.e. supporting both ATM real-time and TCP/IP applications). A comparison with RS (n = 255, k = 233, t = 11) coding shows that it can achieve a higher TCP throughput for a BER up to 7x10(-4).