Analysis of an Adaptive Modulation and Coding scheme with HARQ for TCP traffic

In this paper, we analyze the aggregate TCP throughput performance of a wireless link utilizing Active Queue Management (AQM) and an Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) scheme with Hybrid ARQ (HARQ) based on the probability of failure in the first transmission attempt. We assume packets arriving out-of-order at the wireless receiver due to random retransmissions are resequenced before being released to the network. For this reason, an approximate model for the delay experienced at the resequencing buffer is also presented. In the light of the results obtained from the presented analysis, we propose a threshold for the aforementioned probability of failure making the investigated AMC scheme work at an overall performance close to that of the optimum policy.