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A packet-reordering solution to wireless losses in transmission control protocol

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Abstract

The wireless medium may cause substantial packet losses, rendering Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) inefficient. We propose a cross-layer solution by combining link-layer retransmission techniques and a solution for TCP packet reordering. It is costly to conduct link-layer retransmission with the constraint of orderly packet delivery. We require the link layer to provide reliable packet delivery, but without orderly delivery guarantee, thus transforming the problem of high packet error rates to the problem of packet reordering. The latter is dealt with by enhancing TCP with a solution for packet reordering. We justify our design by analyzing both general scenarios and the case of IEEE 802.11n. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective in improving TCP connection goodput in wireless networks.

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Notes

  1. A cumulative ACK is an ACK that uses the cumulative ACK field in the TCP header to acknowledge all in-sequence data received by the destination.

  2. After fast retransmit is triggered in TCP Tahoe, ssthresh is set to half of the amount of outstanding data sent to the network. Slow start is then carried out with cwnd set to one SMSS.

  3. In the case that multiple losses occur within a window, only the first loss will be seen by the sender and counted towards p c .

  4. We assume that N a is reasonably upper bounded so as to avoid starvation among competing wireless nodes.

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Acknowledgments

This research is supported in part by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, under Grant No. HKU 714510E.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China

    Ka-Cheong Leung, Chengdi Lai, Victor O. K. Li & Daiqin Yang

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  1. Ka-Cheong Leung
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  2. Chengdi Lai
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Correspondence to Chengdi Lai.

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Leung, KC., Lai, C., Li, V.O.K. et al. A packet-reordering solution to wireless losses in transmission control protocol. Wireless Netw 19, 1577–1593 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11276-013-0552-6

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