A multicast hybrid ARQ scheme using MDS codes and GMD decoding

An efficient multicast hybrid ARQ scheme is proposed by incorporating the generalized minimum distance (GRID) decoding of maximum distance separable (MDS) codes with Metzner's (1984) scheme. Erroneous frames are stored in the receiver buffer and recovered after receiving one or more redundant frames. The throughput and the average transmission delay of the proposed scheme are analyzed on memoryless symmetric channels. The proposed scheme can circumvent the degradation of the throughput due to an increase of the number of receivers, which is the most serious defect in the conventional multicast ARQ schemes, at the expense of the transmission delay.