Type-II hybrid-ARQ protocols using punctured Reed-Solomon codes

Reed-Solomon (RS) 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. These properties are shown to lead to a natural definition of an RS type-II hybrid-ARQ protocol. An (n.k) RS code is decomposed into a pair of (n/2,k) punctured RS 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 packets that are known to have caused the generation of retransmission requests