A MAC/PHY cross-layer design for efficient ARQ protocols

In many wireless data systems, automatic repeat request (ARQ) and hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) work independently. In this paper, we introduce a new ARQ feedback scheme called Cross-Layer ARQ (CL-ARQ), where ARQ closely interoperates with HARQ by making use of the acknowledgement of HARQ internally. By doing so, CL-ARQ not only removes the overhead for ARQ acknowledgement messages, but also improves the average delivery delay and TCP throughput. Especially, when the entities in charge of HARQ and ARQ are located far apart geographically, CL-ARQ remarkably outperforms the legacy scheme.