A performance comparison of some combining schemes for finite-buffer ARQ systems in a Rayleigh-fading channel

The throughput performance of a finite-buffer point-to-point ARQ system using multiple-copy decoding (MCD) is analyzed and compared for several hard-decision MCD techniques. Results are presented for a Rayleigh-fading channel model. Although MCD will, in general, improve the performance of an ARQ protocol, there are many possible MCD schemes. Selection of the `best´ scheme has to take into account cost and performance factors. The authors present a general survey of hard-decision MCD schemes that are likely to be considered in practice. A comparison of the relative merits of the different schemes is used to provide some practical guidelines to assist in the selection of the appropriate MCD scheme