Throughput analysis of ARQ protocols for parallel multichannel communications

This paper shows that the SW and GBN retransmission protocols must be generalized when used in a multichannel communications system. The generalization takes the form of packet-to-channel assignment rules. A general condition governing the packet-to-channel assignment rule is derived and important special cases are identified. Simulation results were used to demonstrate that 1) packet-to-channel assignment impacts channel utilization when the channels are different and 2) the optimal assignment rule produces a channel utilization that is better than the channel utilization that results from doing something else or nothing at all.