Effect of channel memory on retransmission protocols for low energy wireless data communications

The decision to attempt or suspend transmission is cast as a stochastic control problem with imperfect state information. By employing a dynamic programming formulation, the tradeoff between high throughput and energy efficiency is resolved in a flexible cost structure over which the optimization is performed. The optimal policy is derived and shown to be a threshold rule that varies with the memory present in the error process. A suboptimal implementation of the policy indicates that the protocol always favors attempting transmissions when the memory is low. As the channel memory increases, the protocol suspends transmission for longer durations after a packet failure.