What action results from a failure to exchange information due to excessive transmission attempts when using an ARQ mode?

In an ARQ (Automatic Repeat reQuest) system, the transmitting station will continually resend a packet if it receives a NAK or if it doesn't receive an ACK within a certain timeframe. To prevent the system from getting stuck in an infinite loop due to poor propagation or a lost connection, there is a built-in retry limit. When this limit of excessive transmission attempts is reached without a successful acknowledgment, the system assumes the radio link has failed. As a result, the connection is dropped (times out), and the stations will usually need to manually re-initiate a link to continue communicating. Distractors like 'the checksum overflows' or 'encoding reverts' sound highly technical but do not reflect how ARQ connection state machines handle timeouts.