JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 21, ISSUE 2, AUGUST 2013 1

An Upper Bound for the Link Efficiency of Selective-Repeat ARQ Considering Unreliable Acknowledgements
K D R Jagath-Kumara
AbstractRecent research on high efficiency data links includes a variety of hybrid-ARQ schemes, which are almost always based on the basic selective-repeat ARQ (SR-ARQ) scheme. Therefore, it is worthwhile to establish performance bounds of SRARQ clearly. If the acknowledgements are reliable, as it is usually assumed, the efficiency of such a scheme is Pc where Pc is the probability that a received frame is error-free. In refining SR-ARQ, this paper shows that the said upper bound of the link 2 efficiency reduces to Pc if the acknowledgements are unreliable as in reality. Index TermsHybrid-ARQ, Link Efficiency, Selective-Repeat ARQ, Unreliable Acknowledgements

1 INTRODUCTION

n exchanging data between two transceivers, a certain link protocol is overlaid for error control and flow control. With some of these protocols known as Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) [1], [2], [3] a data frame consisting of a certain number of data bits, is transmitted after appending the error detection parity bits. If errors are detected in such a frame at the receiver, the transmitter is instructed to retransmit it. Therefore, with this kind of a procedure, an error-free sequence of data frames can be exchanged. In addition, because the two transceivers are connected by bi-directional channels, issues related to flow control and other transmission problems can be managed in real time by using certain control frames. Out of the basic variants, the Selective-Repeat ARQ (SR-ARQ) scheme [1], [2], [3] is known to support continuous transmission of data resulting in highest link efficiency. In order to increase the efficiency further, in hybrid-ARQ, error correction too is incorporated into the protocol. The receiver is provided with the error correction parity bits which are generated using either a block code or a convolutional code, in different ways [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12] so that the efficiency and the average time delay experienced by a frame is minimized. More gains have been obtained by combining the codewords constructed at the receiver after two or more retransmissions as reported in [13], [14] and [15]. However, all of these more efficient versions of hybrid-ARQ are almost always based on the principles of SR-ARQ. Therefore, it is worthwhile to establish the performance bounds of SRARQ clearly through further research. In SR-ARQ, both transceivers are allowed to transmit

multiple data frames in sequence. Each such frame is assigned a sequence number (SeqNr) so that a given receiver can issue explicit positive acknowledgements (Acks) and negative acknowledgements (NAcks) to indicate if the corresponding frames are error-free or erroneous respectively. A given transmitter keeps copies of all the frames sent until the corresponding Acks are received, and retransmits all the frames for which NAcks are received. Further, if the acknowledgement is erroneous and unreadable or if the transmitter does not receive any acknowledgement for a certain frame, it retransmits the same after a time-out period. For this purpose, the transmitter starts a timer for each frame it transmits. The timeout period includes the two way propagation delay, processing delays at the transceivers and a safety margin. Ideally, the receiver must acknowledge each frame individually as they arrive by including Acks or NAcks in the data frames sent back in the other direction. In addition, the receiver buffers all those frames that arrive after an error in a certain frame and re-sequences them once it obtains an error-free copy of the same. The main topic of this paper is to quantify the effect of unreliable acknowledgements. Unreliable acknowledgements include erroneous Ack or NAck frames, Acks converted to NAcks or vice versa due to an error in the AckNr field [16] and lost Acks or NAcks due to frame synchronization errors. However, the parity check detects any of these cases and causes the transmitter to retransmit the corresponding frame after time-out. Although there are methods which improve the reliability of the acknowledgements, such as by sending multiple acknowledgements [5], [15] or by letting an Ack to imply the acknowledgement of previous frames [17], this paper attempts to theoretically establish the effect of unreliable

K D R Jagath-Kumara is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya 20400, Sri Lanka.

2013 JOT www.journaloftelecommunications.co.uk

acknowledgements on the upper bound of the efficiency of SR-ARQ, conditioned on the accuracy of error detection. Note that, according to [17], if an Ack is to imply positive acknowledgements for all the previous frames received correctly, the receiver cannot send the Ack for the current frame until all the previous ones arrive errorfree, increasing the average time delay. Section 2 derives the link efficiency without assuming that the acknowledgements are not subject to errors and are fully reliable. Section 3 compares the link efficiency that results with and without using this assumption. Section 4 provides a conclusion.

tempt, both the frame and the corresponding Ack must be error-free. The probability of this event, Pt(1), is given by

Pt (1) = P c .Pc = Pc 2

(3)

Note that in the case where there is a perfect channel for acknowledgements, Pt(1) is only Pc, because acknowledgements definitely arrive at the transmitter error-free. If the frame carrying the Ack is found to be erroneous, the transmitter cannot rely on the AckNr field and makes a retransmission upon time out with a probability of Pc Pfe . Further, a retransmission also results if the original frame or both the frame and the corresponding NAck are in error with probabilities of Pfe Pc or Pfe Pfe respectively. Hence, the total probability that two transmissions are required for successful completion, Pt(2), is given by
2 2 2 P t (2) = P c Pfe P c + Pfe P cP c + Pfe Pfe P c

2 LINK EFFICIENCY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOR

UNRELIABLE

If the average number of times a given frame is transmitted, including the original transmission and the retransmissions, in the process of transferring an error-free copy of it to the destination is n , the efficiency of SR-ARQ, , is given by (1) = 1/ n This efficiency is for a case where the buffer sizes and the SeqNr space are large enough to keep the transmission continuous. It considers whole frames including the corresponding control fields and the flags. However, if the transmission is not continuous and the frame overhead is considered, (1) is modified by a factor corresponding to the stoppage time and another corresponding to the overhead bits in the frame [1], [2]. Therefore, in general, the derivation of n results in which serves the purpose of an upper bound. The frame transmission is considered successful, only when the transmitter receives an Ack after transmitting a certain frame. Before that, several rounds of unsuccessful transmissions may have taken place due to frame errors causing NAcks. As mentioned, the fact that the acknowledgements too, either Acks or NAcks, may arrive at the transmitter with errors due to channel imperfections making the given transmission round unsuccessful is considered in the following derivation. Note also that there is no synchronism between the transmitting and receiving frames and therefore the occurrence of errors in a given Ack or NAck is not correlated to that in the corresponding frame which is being acknowledged. Therefore, let the probability of error in a data frame be Pfe. Then, if the bi-directional channels are identical, the probability of error in a frame carrying an acknowledgement is also Pfe. Note that if the two channels are not identical, the following derivation will simply result in a different efficiency for each pair of frame error probabilities. Hence, the probability that a frame carrying an acknowledgement is error-free, Pc, is the same as the probability that a data frame is error-free and is given by

(4)

Again, if it has been assumed that the acknowledgements are not vulnerable to errors, Pt(2) would have been only Pfe Pc . Following from (4), it is clear that once a data frame is transmitted, the Ack, the data frame but not the corresponding NAck or both the data frame and the NAck may be in error. Anyone of these three events may occur causing retransmissions until the data frame and its Ack arrive successfully at the receiver and the transmitter respectively. This increases the number of terms in the expression for the probability of the number of transmission attempts for a given frame by a factor of three per each additional transmission. For example,

Pt (3) = Pc Pfe Pc Pfe Pc 2 + Pfe Pc Pc Pfe Pc 2 + Pfe Pfe Pc Pfe Pc 2 + Pc Pfe Pfe Pc Pc 2 + Pfe Pc Pfe Pc Pc 2 + Pfe Pfe Pfe Pc Pc 2 + Pc Pfe Pfe Pfe Pc 2 + Pfe Pc Pfe Pfe Pc 2 + Pfe Pfe Pfe Pfe Pc 2
This implies that the possible sequences of events follow branches of a tree where the root indicates the successful completion of the transmission of a given frame. Each node has three branches which are assigned the probabilities of Pc Pfe , Pfe Pc and Pfe Pfe representing the three possible events. A possible sequence starts from a certain node n representing n transmission rounds and traces down to the root as illustrated in Fig. 1. A given Pt(n) consists of the sum of probabilities of 3(n-1) sequences starting from the corresponding 3(n-1) nodes in the tree. For example, denoting the branch probabilities Pc Pfe , Pfe Pc and Pfe Pfe as a, b and c for simplicity, and considering possible branches that can follow in the tree if four transmission attempts are needed, Pt (4) = aaad + baad + caad + abad (5)

Pc = (1 Pfe )

(2)

+bbad + cbad + acad + bcad + ccad + aabd + babd + cabd + abbd +bbbd + cbbd + acbd + bcbd + ccbd + aacd + bacd + cacd + abcd

If the transmission becomes successful after the first at-

(6)

5 a 4 a 3 a b 3 b 4 c 3 c 2 4 b

5 c 4 a 3 a b b

4 c 3 c 2 b 1 d Success

4 a b

4 c 3 b c

3 a

2 n nth Transmission Nodes Shown Not

Pc 2 = d Pc Pfe = a Pfe Pc = b Pfe Pfe = c

Fig. 1. Tree of retransmission probabilities

where d = Pc 2 . Note that using the same notation, (3), (4), (5) and (6) simplify to,

Hence, A < 1 and A(n-1) approaches zero for large n, resulting in the sum

Pt (1) = d Pt (2) = (a + b + c)d Pt (3) = (a + b + c) 2 d Pt (4) = (a + b + c)3 d

Therefore, it is clear that if n transmissions are required, (7)

n= =

d (1 A) 2 Pc 2
2 2

{1 (1 P )}
c

(11)

1 = 2 Pc
Thus, by substituting (11) in (1), the efficiency of SR-ARQ, without assuming that the acknowledgements are reliable is given by

Pt (n) = (a + b + c)( n 1) d

(8)

which forms a discrete probability density function (pdf) of n, for all integers of n from 1 to . The average number of transmissions required for the successful completion of transferring one frame can then be found by averaging n over this pdf as

= Pc 2

(12)

n = nPt (n) = n(a + b + c)

n =1 n =1

( n 1)

(9)

Note that this would be = Pc [1], [2] with the assumption mentioned.

This is the summation of the infinite series given by

2 3 ( n 1) n = d + .... 1 + 2 A + 3 A + 4 A + .... + nA (10)

4 RESULTS
If the bit errors in the channel occur randomly with a biterror probability of Pbe, the probability that a given frame L of length L bits is error free is given by Pc = (1 Pbe ) . Fig. 2 illustrates the efficiency of SR-ARQ if the acknowledgements are unreliable, evaluated using (12), for various values of Pbe and 1000-bit frames. The same figure also includes the efficiency, if it is assumed that the acknowledgements are reliable, for comparison. It can be seen that

where (a + b + c) = A . Substituting Pfe = (1 Pc ) , A which ( Pc Pfe + Pfe Pc + Pfe Pfe ), simplifies to (1 Pc 2 ) . is

if the acknowledgements are not reliable, the SR-ARQ link efficiency becomes considerably inferior, particularly when Pbe>10-5. In quantifying, the efficiency reduces by about 60% at Pbe=10-3 and by about 10% at Pbe=10-4. When Pbe < 10-5, bit errors and then the frame errors are very infrequent almost validating the assumption that the acknowledgements are perfect.

[5]

[6]

[7]

Reliable Acks/Nacks 1.2 1

Unreliable Acks/NAcks

[8]

[9]

Efficiency

0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0 2 3 4 - Log (Pbe) 5 6

[11] [10]

Fig. 2. Link efficiencies of SR-ARQ (L=1000)

[12]

4 CONCLUSION
It has been shown that if the acknowledgements are not reliable, the link efficiency reduces to Pc 2 , instead of Pc in an ideal case with fully reliable acknowledgements. This reduction amounts to 60% when Pbe=10-3 in bi-directional channels with random bit errors. Note that Pc 2 is an upper bound for the efficiency of SR-ARQ overlaid on a full duplex channel, both of which are prone to errors. This efficiency is only to reduce due to the frame overhead, discontinuous transmission and the undetectable error probability. It is interesting to quantify the same for bursterror channels, which will be pursued in a different paper. In order to make acknowledgements reliable, the receiver can include several copies of them in different frames so that at least one of them reaches the transmitter error-free [5], [15]. Further, header error correction and header repetition increases the same reliability.

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

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K.D.R. Jagath-Kumara

[4]

received the BSc (Honours) degree specializing in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 1985 and the MEngSc degree from the University of New South

Wales, Sydney, Australia in 1992. He received the PhD degree from the University of South Australia in 1997. Jagath-Kumara was employed as an engineer from 1986-87 in the Ceylon Electricity Board and from 1987-89 in the Airports and Aviation Services (Sri Lanka) Ltd. He held research fellow positions at the University of South Australia from 1996-97 and at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia in 1998. He was a lecturer in the Massey university, New Zealand from 2000-06. From 2006, he has been a senior lecturer in the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He has published 25 conference and journal articles since 1994 and given 7 seminars at international venues. His research interests are on the statistical signal processing, hybrid-ARQ and energy systems and have obtained 4 research grants and 6 conference travel grants. Jagath-Kumara won a PhD scholarship based on the outstanding academic qualifications offered by the University of South Australia in 1992. In 2007, he th received the 140 anniversary medal and honours from the St Annes College, Sri Lanka for the contributions made to his academic discipline since 1980. He has been either, a member, co-chair or the chair of the TPC for many international conferences and has reviewed close to 100 conference and journal papers. He was a past member of the Engineers Australia and the IEEE. He is currently a corporate member of the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka.