This paper presents laboratory experimental results on the throughput performance when key techniques such as adaptive modulation and channel coding (AMC) and hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) with packet combining are employed by an implemented transceiver based on the High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) air interface in a multipath fading channel. In AMC operation, we applied four modulation and coding schemes (MCSs): MCS1 (QPSK data modulation with the channel coding rate of R = 1/2, hereafter simply referred to as QPSK with R = 1/2), MCS2 (QPSK with R = 3/4), MCS3 (16 QAM with R = 1/2), and MCS4 (16 QAM with R = 3/4). The results elucidate that a peak average throughput above 5.0 Mbps is achieved at the average received signal energy per chip-to-background noise power spectrum density ratio (Ec/N0) of more than approximately 20 dB in a one-path fading channel; nevertheless, the achievable peak throughput becomes approximately 2.9 (2.6) Mbps due to severe multipath interference (MPI) in a two-path fading channel where the average signal power of the second path is 6 (3) dB lower than that of the first path, assuming nine-code-channel multiplexing with the fading maximum Doppler frequency of fD = 5 Hz. Furthermore, we clarify that although the throughput performance employing Type-II hybrid ARQ (i.e., Incremental redundancy) is almost the same as that employing Type-I hybrid ARQ with packet combining (i.e., Chase combining) in a two-path fading channel, Incremental redundancy exhibits superiority over Chase combing in a one-path fading channel for a high Doppler frequency channel such as fD = 80 Hz.

This paper presents a comparison of the throughput performance employing hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) with packet combining, such as Type-I with packet combining (simply Chase combining hereafter) and Type-II (Incremental redundancy hereafter), using turbo coding in a multipath fading channel in high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA). We apply a multipath interference canceller (MPIC) to remove the influence of severe multipath interference. Link level simulation results show that the maximum throughput using Incremental redundancy with 64QAM is improved by approximately 5-8% compared to that using Chase combining, and that the required average received signal energy of 12 code channels per chip-to-background noise spectrum density (Ec/N0) at the throughput of 4 Mbps with Incremental redundancy is decreased by approximately 1.0 dB rather than that with Chase combining when the vehicular speed is higher than approximately 30 km/h. Furthermore, we elucidate based on the system level simulation that although no improvement is obtained in a slow mobility environment such as the average vehicular speed of 3 km/h, the achieved throughput of Incremental redundancy is increased by approximately 5-6% and 13% for the average vehicular speed of 30 km/h and 120 km/h, respectively, compared to that with Chase combining.