Energy-constrained error control for wireless channels

Center for Wireless Communications, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0407, USA fax: +1-619-534-2486 – e-mail: fzorzi,[email protected] Abstract— We posit that limiting performance metrics of error control protocols to throughput and delay is inappropriate when terminals are powered by a finite energy battery source. We propose the total number of correctly transmitted packets during the lifetime of a finite energy source as another metric. We study the Go-back-N error control protocol assuming (1) Markov errrors on both the forward and the feedback channels and (2) a finite energy source with a flat power profile, and characterize the sensitivity of the total number of correctly transmitted packets to the choice of the output power level. We then generalize our results to arbitrary power profiles through both a recursive technique and Markov analysis. Finally, we compare the performance of GBN with an adaptive error control protocol (which slows down the transmission rate when the channel is impaired) and document the advantages.