Soft decision hybrid-ARQ error control for mobile data networks

Abstract

Narrowband mobile data networks often use BCH codes for error correction. All currently existing efficient decoders for these codes are hard decision decoders (HDDs). Efficient, trellis-based, soft decision decoders (SDDs) for these codes are presented. The SDDs can simultaneously outperform their hard decision counterparts in both reliability and throughput. They also have a variable threshold for generating retransmission requests, which allows the system to dynamically vary the balance between reliability and throughput.