Buffer Control for Transmission of Blocked Data Over Fading Channels

Since fading channels are characterized by frequent signal dropouts which are long compared to packet duration, substantial buffer space must be provided at both ends of the link. Systems which rely on selective, on/off transmission to achieve low bit error rates are seriously affected by the special conditions which must be imposed on them to prevent buffer overflow or underflow. This effect can be reduced by a method of buffer control developed and analyzed in this paper, in which the average transmission rate is varied as a function of queue length in an attempt to keep the queue away from the ends of the buffer. It is shown that buffer control provides the same improvement in average error probability as does doubling the buffer size, but without the associated doubled storage cost and doubled delay. In order to simplify the analysis and keep the discussion relevant, the system is oriented to transmission of fixed length blocks or packets.