Type-II hybrid-ARQ protocols using punctured MDS codes

MDS codes possess several properties that make them an ideal choice for type-II hybrid-ARQ protocols. These properties include “strong separability”, “strong invertibility”, and excellent reliability performance when used for simultaneous error detection and correction. In this paper these properties are shown to lead to a natural definition of an MDS (maximum distance separable) type-II hybrid-ARQ protocol. An (n, k) MDS code is decomposed into a pair of (n/2, k) punctured MDS codes. The original code and the two derivative codes are used individually in type I hybrid-ARQ protocols. These three type-I protocols combine to form a single type II protocol. The performance of this system is analyzed in detail, with particular attention paid to the definition of an effective channel model for code words that are known to have caused the generation of retransmission requests