A novel approach to ARQ error control mechanisms for wireless LANs communications

Communications in high-speed wireless mobile networks have to deal with large varying transmission and service requirement conditions, often needing complex radio modulations and concatenated error control functions. For the latter, it is usual to implement forward error correction and automatic repeat request (ARQ) mechanisms in, respectively, the physical (PHY) and the data link control (DLC) layers. Even so, the communication requirements of medium/high quality real-time services may be hard to meet under hostile transmission conditions. In this paper an analysis of some improvements over current ARQ error control schemes is presented, envisaging more efficient communications in high-speed wireless LANs. It is shown that high performance ARQ schemes can be used at the DLC layer of wireless LANs by carrying critical control information in more robust physical modes. Performance comparisons for current and proposed ARQ schemes, and some protocol implementation aspects, are the main focuses of analysis