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Smart Enhancement of TCP Performance Over Lossy WLAN Channels Through the Combined Use of Link Layer Techniques

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Abstract

This paper shows an important enhancement of TCP behavior over the IEEE 802.11b Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) if a combination of a Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme and a Snoop agent is added to the idle Repeat reQuest (RQ) mechanism inherently used by such technology. The FEC scheme has been improved with some smart cross-layer optimizations, and its operation adapts to the channel conditions. Besides, the aim of the Snoop agent is to back up the FEC, overcoming the deficiencies of its adaptation, which are mainly due to the high variability of the channel inside a typical office environment. A complete experimental approach has been followed, and exhaustive measurement campaigns have been carried out over a real platform to derive a large number of performance parameters. Both methods have been implemented as modules belonging to a generic layer-two Performance Enhancing Proxy (PEP).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communications Engineering, University of Cantabria, Spain

    Marta García, Ramón Agüero, Luis Muñoz & José Ángel Irastorza

Authors
  1. Marta García
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  2. Ramón Agüero
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  3. Luis Muñoz
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  4. José Ángel Irastorza
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marta García.

Additional information

Marta García is assistant professor at the University of Cantabria since 1994. She received a B.Sc. degree in physics with electronics and an M.Sc. degree in communications engineering from the University of Cantabria in 1991 and 1993, respectively. She joined the Communications Engineering Department in 1992 where she has been involved in different national and international projects, the latter within the ACTS and IST programs. Her research topics are in mobile and wireless communications as well as performance analysis and protocol design for wireless networks.

Ramón Agüero received a degree in telecommunications engineering from the University of Cantabria in 2001. Since 2000 he has been a researcher at the Communications Engineering Department on that university, where he is also pursuing his PhD. He has participated in several research projects, both with private and public funding, highlighting IST programme projects. His research focuses on the WLAN and WPAN technologies, with special attention on performance analysis of TCP/IP protocols over them and ad hoc networks.

Luis Muñoz is associate professor at the University of Cantabria. He received a degree and a Ph.D. in telecommunications engineering from the Technical University of Cataluña (UPC), Spain in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He joined the Communications Engineering Department in 1990 where he has been principal investigator in different national and international projects, the latter within the ACTS and IST programs. His current research focuses on wireless Internet, wireless personal networks and low-power communications.

José Ángel Irastorza is assistant professor at the University of Cantabria. He received a degree in telecommunications engineering Degree from the Technical University of Cataluña (UPC), Spain, in 1995. He has been working in the field of telematics since 1995 in topics related with network design and planning. Later he began to work in network and systems management. His current research interest lies in network management distributed architectures, wireless local area networks and wireless personal area networks.

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García, M., Agüero, R., Muñoz, L. et al. Smart Enhancement of TCP Performance Over Lossy WLAN Channels Through the Combined Use of Link Layer Techniques. Wireless Pers Commun 37, 91–103 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-006-0962-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-006-0962-1

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