Practical implementation of cross-layer design in broadband wireless access networks

Abstract

The established success of wireless communications in terms of high data rates provision is undoubtedly owed to several combinations of different mechanisms. Such a combination is the well-known forward error correction (FEC) mechanism that combines automatic-repeat-request (ARQ) protocol and error correction capabilities. Furthermore, in the last decade, a cross-layer design provides the combination of different mechanisms across the layers and thus the performance gain is increased in wireless communications over fading channels. In this paper, we present a practical cross-layer design implementation that combines adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) and hybrid ARQ at the physical and data link layer by using different error correction schemes. Our implementation is based on a cross-layer design of AMC and HARQ. We perform simulations with different channel coding and modulation schemes that are implemented in broadband wireless access networks as IEEE 802.16 and 3GPP HSPA and thus the results obtained show the performance achieved by this practical cross-layer implementation in terms of spectral efficiency in two main broadband wireless access networks available into the market.