Analysis of Hybrid ARQ in Ad Hoc Networks with Correlated Interference and Feedback Errors

In this paper, the performance of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) technique in an ad hoc network is analyzed. Unlike most prior works on the analysis of HARQ, both time-correlated interference and feedback errors are taken into account in the analysis. Based on the theory of point processes, outage probability after the nth retransmission, delay limited throughput and mean transmission time are derived in closed forms. The analytical results are verified by simulations and the impacts of various parameters on the network performance are investigated in detail. It is found that the outage probability obeys the inverse-2/α power law over the number of retransmissions, where α is the path loss exponent. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the feedback error significantly degrades the delay limited throughput when the ad hoc network becomes dense, while the increment of mean transmission time due to the feedback error is a concave function of the intensity of the network.