Simplified analysis of HARQ cooperative networks using finite-state Markov chains

This paper considers the analysis of communication protocols in wireless networks implementing both cooperation and Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) for Type I decoder and Type II decoder with Chase Combining. Using an example of a three-node network, we show that the communication protocol can be modeled using Finite State Markov Chains. This model efficiently predicts the performance of the system. However, the complexity depends on the number of states, which increases very fast as the protocol gets more sophisticated. We then derive a simplified model using state aggregation, and obtain a compact description which can be used to predict the performance with a reduced complexity. Moreover, we show that the simplified model describes a probabilistic communication protocol on the same network. Monte Carlo simulations show that the theoretical predictions match the simulated performance.