Described embodiments reduce ARQ/HARQ latency using carrier aggregation and cross-carrier ARQ/HARQ signaling. In embodiments, a wireless backhaul transmission link uses multiple paired carriers with complementary TDD frame timing. In embodiments, backhaul traffic subframes are protected using FEC and/or CRC encoding and ACK/NACK information is generated based on decoding and computing the FEC and/or CRC information for the subframes. The ACK/NACK information may be transmitted on the paired carrier. In embodiments, cross-carrier ARQ/HARQ signaling may reduce ARQ/HARQ latency to less than two TDD subframes.