  We investigate secret key rates for the quantum repeater using encoding [L.
Jiang et al., Phys. Rev. A 79, 032325 (2009)] and compare them to the standard
repeater scheme by Briegel, D\"ur, Cirac, and Zoller. The former scheme has the
advantage of a minimal consumption of classical communication. We analyze the
trade-off in the secret key rate between the communication time and the
required resources. For this purpose, we introduce an error model for the
repeater using encoding which allows for input Bell states with a fidelity
smaller than one, in contrast to the model given in [L. Jiang et al., Phys.
Rev. A 79, 032325 (2009)]. We show that one can correct additional errors in
the encoded connection procedure of this repeater and develop a suitable
decoding algorithm. Furthermore, we derive the rate of producing entangled
pairs for the quantum repeater using encoding and give the minimal parameters
(gate quality and initial fidelity) for establishing a nonzero secret key. We
find that the generic quantum repeater is optimal regarding the secret key rate
per memory per second and show that the encoded quantum repeater using the
simple three-qubit repetition code can even have an advantage with respect to
the resources compared to other recent quantum repeater schemes with encoding.
