Performance Evaluation of HARQ-Assisted Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Relay Networks

Abstract

This letter investigates the delay-limited throughput of a satellite-terrestrial relay network with hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocol in which a satellite communicates with a user with the aid of an amplify-and-forward (AF) terrestrial relay. Particularly, the proposed analysis includes both the channel state information (CSI)-assisted and the fixed gain AF relaying protocols for two representative HARQ schemes, namely, chase combining (CC) and incremental redundancy (IR). Numerical results are provided to evaluate the performance of different HARQ schemes and relay protocols, and also indicate the impact of key parameters, such as the HARQ round number and target information rate, on the achievable performance.