Reliability-based incremental redundancy with convolutional codes

Incremental redundancy, or Hybrid type-II ARQ (HARQ), algorithms use a combination of forward error correction and retransmissions to guarantee reliable packet data communications. In this work, we propose a HARQ algorithm that exploits received packet reliability to improve system performance. Specifically, the receiver uses the average magnitude of the log-likelihood ratios of the information bits as the packet reliability metric, which is then used to determine the sizes of subsequent retransmissions. The proposed retransmission strategy attempts to maximize user throughput while satisfying a maximum packet delay constraint. The performance of our reliability-based HARQ algorithm is evaluated in static and time-varying channels through simulations. Furthermore, analytical results on the relationship between the reliability metric, the code rate and the block error rate are presented.