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A cross-layer congestion and contention window control scheme for TCP performance improvement in wireless LANs

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Abstract

Neither the current TCP protocol nor the standard backoff algorithm of IEEE 802.11 protocol is able to distinguish corruption loss from congestion or collision loss. Hence, high transmission errors and a varying latency inherent in wireless channel would have a seriously adverse effect on the performance of TCP. In this paper, we propose a novel and pragmatic cross-layer approach with joint congestion and contention window control scheme to improve the performance of TCP in IEEE 802.11 wireless environments. In addition to theoretical analysis, simulations are conducted to evaluate the proposed scheme. As it turns out, our design indeed provides a more efficient solution for frequent transmission loss and enables TCP to distinguish between congestion loses and transmission errors, thus to take proper remedial actions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Changhua University of Education, Changhua, Taiwan

    Der-Jiunn Deng & Heng-Jia Chang

  2. Department of Computer and Communication, Kun Shan University, Tainan, Taiwan

    Rung-Shiang Cheng

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

    Hui-Tang Lin

  4. Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Dong Hwa University, Hualien, Taiwan

    Ruay-Shiung Chang

Authors
  1. Der-Jiunn Deng
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  2. Rung-Shiang Cheng
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  3. Heng-Jia Chang
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  4. Hui-Tang Lin
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  5. Ruay-Shiung Chang
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Correspondence to Der-Jiunn Deng.

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Deng, DJ., Cheng, RS., Chang, HJ. et al. A cross-layer congestion and contention window control scheme for TCP performance improvement in wireless LANs. Telecommun Syst 42, 17–27 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-009-9166-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11235-009-9166-9

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