Efficient ARQ Protocol for Hybrid Relay Schemes with Limited Feedback

When channel state information (CSI) is not available to the transmitter, outage events might happen and automatic repeat request (ARQ) is implemented to ensure reliable transmission in such case. In this paper, we consider a three nodes relay system with hybrid relay scheme, where the relay, based on it decoding status, could switch between decode-and-forward (DF) and compress-and-forward (CF) adaptively. We notice that CSI is required when CF is deployed and consider practical implementation issues by enhancing the ability of feedback channel from the destination to the relay to convey a few extra bits (only 2 bits in this paper) in addition to the ACK/NACK bit and propose a new ARQ scheme. The modified scheme allows the relay to utilize various relay schemes more flexibly according to its coding status and the extra feedback bits. ARQ strategies with hybrid relay schemes exhibits superior performance over direct transmission and pure DF, especially when the relay is close to the destination.