Efficient ARQ protocols for exploiting cooperative relaying in wireless sensor networks

Cooperative relaying is an efficient technique to provide diversity in wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we exploit the limited feedback from the destination and propose a novel cooperative ARQ protocol, which combines the incremental relaying and selection relaying schemes. A relay node is requested to repeat the erroneously received packet, instead of the source node. Both simple and hybrid type I ARQ schemes are studied. An analysis model is established to analyze and compare the data link layer performances of different ARQ protocols in slow fading wireless channel. We prove two SNR thresholds of the relay–destination channel, above which the cooperative ARQ protocols have better performances than the traditional counterparts. In addition, the diversity performances of the various protocols are investigated and it is demonstrated that full order diversity (second-order in this case) can be exploited by the proposed cooperative ARQ protocol. Simulation results are given, which verify the theoretical analysis and comparison.