Improving the performance of Transport Control Protocol over 802.11 wireless networks

Abstract

One of the main reasons for TCP's (Transport Control Protocol) degraded performance in 802.11 wireless networks is the TCP's interpretation that the packet loss is caused by network congestion. However, in wireless networks packet loss occurs mostly due to high bit error rate, packet corruption, and link failure. TCP performance in wired/wireless networks may be substantially improved if the causes of packet loss could be identified and appropriate rectifying measures could be taken dynamically during the lifetime of a TCP session. This paper proposes an end-to-end improvement approach to the current TCP protocol by extending the used RTO (Retransmission Time Out) in such a way it allows TCP an additional waiting time for wireless errors to get fixed. This approach is validated through numerical analysis and simulations, and then compared to the current implemented TCP protocol. The simulation results have demonstrated higher TCP performance in terms of traffic sent, and retransmission attempts. This is highly recommended for a wide range of applications in mixed wired and wireless scenarios.