| Research presented in this thesis develops a mainly theoretical basis and computer models for enhancing the throughput of multi-user wireless communication networks. The cross-layer combination of an adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) scheme at the physical layer and the use of automatic repeat request (ARQ) retransmissions at the data link layer is integrated into a scheduling framework for multi-user networks. Scheduling algorithms incorporating retransmission diversity are derived for three cases of typical network traffic: best-effort, non-realtime, and realtime. For each case, numeric computer simulations of wireless communications over Nakagami-m block fading channels are developed to examine the effectiveness of the formulated schemes.;Results of the work conducted indicate that integrating ARQ retransmissions with quality-of-service (QoS)-guaranteed multi-user scheduling algorithms in wireless networks is effective in enhancing spectral efficiency and system throughput, and that carefully selected rate and delay constraints in AMC also have a significant effect when incorporated with ARQ retransmission. |
