In some embodiments, the invention involves increasing hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) throughput. In one embodiment, throughput may be increased by clearing the retransmission buffer at least one frame in advance, based on status received from the downlink device before a full acknowledgement. Another embodiment partitions HARQ bursts into two groups. A first group is for packet data units (PDUs) that are anticipated to be in error and a second group is for PDUs anticipated to be received correctly. Only PDUs that are anticipated to be in error, based on forward error correction (FEC) blocks, are to be saved in the retransmission buffer. Other embodiments are described and claimed.