An analytical model for ARQ cooperative diversity in multi-hop wireless networks

This paper presents an analytical model for a general automatic repeat request (ARQ) cooperative diversity (ACD) scheme in cluster-based multi-hop wireless networks. For the considered ACD scheme, transmission in each hop is supported by a number of relays using a finite number of transmission rounds. While prior works in the literature mostly focused on simulation and/or information theoretic analysis, we instead develop a model to analyze end-to-end performance in terms of probability of end-to-end delivery failure, end-to-end delay distribution, and end-to-end throughput. The application of the proposed analytical model for a transmission scheme which employs jointly a truncated ARQ protocol and a maximal ratio combiner is illustrated. Numerical results validate the proposed analytical model and compare the ACD scheme with the Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and traditional truncated ARQ schemes in a linear network. The ACD scheme exploiting both time diversity (through retransmission) and spatial diversity is shown to have several desirable adaptive characteristics compared to other schemes.