PCI reduction method suitable for type-II HARQ with SR-ARQ

Hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) can make efficient and reliable transmission possible for radio communications. However, in the HARQ scheme, packet control information (PCI), such as HARQ block identifiers (HARQ block ids) in selective repeat ARQ (SR-ARQ), are required and the reduction of PCI overhead is an issue. In particular, type-II HARQ handles a large amount of PCI because it includes the HARQ block ids and sub-block ids. The sub-block id identifies the set of parity bits in the HARQ block of the corresponding sub-block, and is used to combine the sub-blocks. This report proposes a method of PCI reduction suitable for type-II HARQ with SR-ARQ. The method can inform the HARQ block id and sub-block id of each HARQ block by sending only the information on how many HARQ blocks are contained in each 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th transmission group. The estimated size of reduced PCI and simulation results of our TDD communication system confirms that the proposed method greatly reduces PCI and improves data throughput compared to a conventional method.