Throughput analysis of buffer-constrained wireless systems in the finite blocklength regime

In this paper, a single point-to-point wireless link operating under queueing constraints in the form of limitations on the buffer violation probabilities is considered. The achievable throughput under such constraints is captured by the effective capacity formulation. It is assumed that finite blocklength codes are employed for transmission. Under this assumption, a recent result on the channel coding rate in the finite blocklength regime is incorporated into the analysis, and the throughput achieved with such codes in the presence of queueing constraints and decoding errors is identified. The performance of different transmission strategies (e.g., variable-rate, variable-power, and fixed-rate transmissions) is studied. Interactions and tradeoffs between the throughput, queueing constraints, coding blocklength, decoding error probabilities, and signal-to-noise ratio are investigated, and several conclusions with important practical implications are drawn.