An efficient cooperative ARQ protocol for wireless relay networks

An efficient cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) protocol for distributed space–time coded cooperative networks is proposed in this paper. Conventional cooperative ARQ protocol just utilizes the relays which can decode the packet from the source in direct transmission. However, relays which can not receive the packet successfully have the ability to listen to the retransmission and decode the packet with high probability. Therefore, we consider to let these relays join in the next possible retransmission. We prove that the proposed cooperative ARQ protocol has a lower packet loss rate and average retransmission number than conventional ARQ protocol. Finally, the simulation results verify our theoretical results and show that the proposed ARQ protocol is suitable for the relay networks where the source node is close to the relay nodes.