Packet level acknowledgement and Go-Back-N protocol performance in infrared wireless LANs

Infrared wireless LANs may employ repetition rate (RR) coding to increase the symbol capture probability at the receiver. This paper examines the effectiveness of RR coding to utilization for infrared LANs using the physical and link layer parameter values proposed in the Advanced Infrared (AIr) protocol standard, which is developed by the Infrared Data Association (IrDA). Infrared LANs employ a Go-Back-N (GBN) automatic repeat request (ARQ) retransmission scheme at the Link Control (LC) layer to ensure reliable information transfer. To efficiently implement RR coding, the receiver may return after every DATA packet a suggestion for the suitable RR value to be used by the transmitter and implement a Stop-and-Wait (SW) ARQ scheme at the medium access control (MAC) layer. The effectiveness of employing this optional SW ARQ scheme at the MAC layer is discussed. Analytical models for the ARQ retransmission schemes are developed and employed to compare protocol utilization for different link parameter values such as window size, packet length and LC time out periods. This analysis identifies the ARQ protocol that maximizes performance for the specific link quality and the implemented link layer parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed RR coding to LAN utilization for different ARQ scheme implementation is finally explored. This analysis identifies the link quality level at which RR should be adjusted for maximum performance. It is concluded that if the packet error rate is higher than 0.1–0.4 (depending on the implemented ARQ protocol), the receiver should advise the transmitter to double the implemented RR for maximum performance. These error rate values are high and can be effectively estimated by the transmitter based on packet retransmissions. Thus, the usefulness of the receiver indicating to the transmitter to adjust RR is questionable, as the transmitter can effectively implement the suitable RR value based on packet retransmissions. Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.