Steady-state and transient delay analysis of ARQ protocols

A technique for the performance evaluation of ARQ protocols is presented. General distributions for the packet interarrival times at the transmitter are assumed. Two specific ARQ protocols, the stop-and-wait ARQ and the continuous ARQ are examined in particular. Both the transient and steady-state behaviour are obtained. A simple iterative scheme is proposed for the computation of the delay experienced by the packets and for the packet interdeparture time distribution. The latter result can be applied to the analysis of networks using an ARQ protocol in their datalink control layer. This method is demonstrated for the special case of a network consisting of N nodes connected in tandem. Analytical results are compared with simulation runs and excellent agreement is observed.