Improving Transport Layer Performance in Multihop Ad Hoc Networks by Exploiting MAC Layer Information

The traditional TCP congestion control mechanism encounters a number of new problems and suffers a poor performance when the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is used in multihop ad hoc networks. Many of the problems result from medium contention at the MAC layer. In this paper, we first illustrate that severe medium contention and congestion are intimately coupled, and TCP's congestion control algorithm becomes too coarse in its granularity, causing throughput instability and excessively long delay. Further, we illustrate TCP's severe unfairness problem due to the medium contention and the tradeoff between aggregate throughput and fairness. Then, based on the novel use of channel busyness ratio, a more accurate metric to characterize the network utilization and congestion status, we propose a new wireless congestion control protocol (WCCP) to efficiently and fairly support the transport service in multihop ad hoc networks. In this protocol, each forwarding node along a traffic flow exercises the inter-node and intra-node fair resource allocation and determines the MAC layer feedback accordingly. The end-to-end feedback, which is ultimately determined by the bottleneck node along the flow, is carried back to the source to control its sending rate. Extensive simulations show that WCCP significantly outperforms traditional TCP in terms of channel utilization, delay, and fairness, and eliminates the starvation problem     

Dropping Policy with Burst Retransmission to Improve the Throughput of TCP Over Optical Burst-switched Networks

A major concern in optical burst-switched (OBS) networks is contention, which occurs when more than one bursts contend for the same data channel at the same time. Due to the bufferless nature of OBS networks, these contentions randomly occur at any degree of congestion in the network. When contention occurs at any core node, the core node drops bursts according to its dropping policy. Burst loss in OBS networks significantly degrades the throughput of TCP sources in the local access networks because current TCP congestion control mechanisms perform a slow start phase mainly due to contention rather than heavy congestion. However, there has not been much study about the impact of burst loss on the performance of TCP over OBS networks. To improve TCP throughput over OBS networks, we first introduce a dropping policy with burst retransmission that retransmits the bursts dropped due to contention, at the ingress node. Then, we extend the dropping policy with burst retransmission to drop a burst that has experienced fewer retransmissions in the event of contention at a core node in order to reduce the number of events that a TCP source enters the slow start phase due to contention. In addition, we propose to limit the number of retransmissions of each burst to prevent severe congestion. For the performance evaluation of the proposed schemes, we provide an analytic throughput model of TCP over OBS networks. Through simulations as well as analytic modeling, it is shown that the proposed dropping policy with burst retransmission can improve TCP throughput over OBS networks compared with an existing dropping policy without burst retransmission.     

无线自组织网络TCP速率联合调制

TCP在无线自组织网络中受到信道竞争和队列拥塞的双重影响,因而不能准确地调节数据发送速率从而降低了传输性能。本文针对该问题提出一种基于对信道竞争和排队拥塞联合检测的TCP速率调制策略。实验结果显示,本策略在吞吐量和端到端时延上均明显提高了TCP的性能。     

Cognitive radio intelligent-MAC (CR-i-MAC): channel-diverse contention free approach for spectrum management

Cognitive radio was introduced to fill up the imbalance between spectrum scarcity and spectrum underutilization. So to make such an ideology work, a network which can utilize all the available channel in the best efficient manner, without causing any harmful interface to primary user (PU) and maintaining the Quality of Service (QoS) for cognitive user (CU) is required. In both Mesh as well as ad-hoc networks, effective utilization of the white-spaces by the CUs maintaining the QoS for both primary and CU is a challenging task due to the frequent and instant change in their channel status. In this paper an intelligent-MAC (i-MAC) for cognitive radio (CR) using two transceivers based on hybrid approach of combination of cooperative decision and contention-free approach is proposed. Cooperative decision, to overcome hidden node or the case when there is no common channel between the CU’s and contention-free approach, to solve the issues in contention mechanism, where same channel is selected simultaneously by multiple CU’s. Proposed CR-i-MAC permits an effective dynamic spectrum access to CUs without effecting the QoS for PU’s. The simulative performance analysis of proposed CR-i-MAC is tested in various critical cases like multi-channel single-radio and multi-channel multi-radio over different on demand routing protocols like dynamic source routing, ad-hoc on demand distance vector and weighted cumulative expected transmission time using network simulator (NS-2). The performance of the network is measured on the basis of parameters like throughput, delay and interference. The analysis of the simulation results shows that the proposed CR-i-MAC outperforms various other CR MAC’s in terms of both increased throughput and reduced delays thereby making the system stable and efficient.     

TFMCC versus ASMP: lessons learned from performance evaluation

In this article we present a simulation‐based comparison of one of the best‐known multicast congestion control schemes—TCP‐friendly Multicast Congestion Control (TFMCC)—against our proposed Adaptive Smooth Multicast Protocol (ASMP). ASMP consists of a single‐rate multicast congestion control mechanism which takes advantage of the RTCP Sender (SR) and Receiver Reports (RR) in order to adjust the sender's transmission rate in respect of the network conditions. The innovation in ASMP lays in the ‘smooth’ transmission rate, which is TCP‐friendly and prevents oscillations. We use an integrated simulation environment named Multi‐Evalvid‐RA for the evaluation of the two congestion control schemes. Multi‐Evalvid‐RA provides all the necessary tools to perform simulation studies and assess video quality by using both network‐centric metrics along with video quality measurements. Performance evaluation results show that ASMP is a very efficient solution for rate‐adaptive multimedia applications and a serious competitor to well‐known TFMCC. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A comparison of congestion control and time slot algorithms in Internet transmission performance

The characteristics of TCP and UDP lead to different network transmission behaviours. TCP is responsive to network congestion whereas UDP is not. This paper proposes two mechanisms that operate at the source node to regulate TCP and UDP flows and provide a differential service for them. One is the congestion‐control mechanism, which uses congestion signal detected by TCP flows to regulate the flows at the source node. Another is the time‐slot mechanism, which assigns different number of time slots to flows to control their flow transmission. Based on the priority of each flow, different bandwidth proportions are allocated for each flow and differential services are provided. Simulation results show some insights of these two mechanisms. Moreover, we summarize the factors that may impact the performance of these two mechanisms. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using TCP rate control for queue input‐output rate matching

In explicit TCP rate control, the receiver's advertised window size in acknowledgment (ACK) packets can be modified by intermediate network elements to reflect network congestion conditions. The TCP receiver's advertised window (i.e. the receive buffer of a TCP connection) limits the maximum window and consequently the throughput that can be achieved by the sender. Appropriate reduction of the advertised window can control the number of packets allowed to be sent from a TCP source. This paper evaluates the performance of a TCP rate control scheme in which the receiver's advertised window size in ACK packets are modified in a network node in order to match the generated load to the assigned bandwidth in the node. Using simulation and performance metrics such as the packet loss rates and the cumulative number of TCP timeouts, we examine the service improvement provided by the TCP rate control scheme to the users. The modified advertised windows computed in the network elements and the link utilization are also examined. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Cross-Layer Approach for Per-Station Fairness in TCP over WLANs

In this paper, we investigate the issue of per-station fairness in TCP over IEEE 802.11-compliant wireless local area networks (WLANs), especially in Wi-Fi hot spot. It is asserted that the hot spot suffers from the unfairness among stations in exploiting the wireless medium. The source of this unfairness is analyzed from two aspects, TCP-induced asymmetry and MAC-induced asymmetry; the former causes TCP congestion control with a cumulative acknowledgment mechanism to prefer the sending stations to receiving stations, while the later exacerbates the unfairness problem in the hot spots. We investigate the interaction between TCP congestion control and MAC contention control, and propose a cross-layer feedback approach to assure per-station fairness and to ensure high channel utilization. In this approach, we introduce the notion of channel access cost to quantify the system-wide traffic load and per-station channel usage. The access cost is estimated at the MAC in an access point and conveyed to the TCP sender. Then, the TCP sender adjusts its sending rate based on the access cost, so as to assure per-station fairness. The simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can provide both per-station fairness and high channel utilization, irrespective of network configurations.     

多源协作的传输控制机制

多路径传输控制协议（Multipath Transmission Control Protocol,MPTCP）是传输控制协议的一种扩展,实现端到端动态地利用多个地址建立多条传输路径,从而提高网络传输质量和可靠性.但是,MPTCP仍存在局限,能够解决端到端已确定的多路径调度问题,但难以实现不同端以及变化端间的路径协作.智慧协同网络是一种新型的未来网络体系,其核心思想是通过网络组件的智慧协作,最大限度优化利用网络资源,提高网络工作效率.本论文提出了基于智慧协同网络的多源协作传输控制机制,实现了传输控制协议从单源多路径向多源多路径的突破.具体来说,首先刻画了一种智慧协同网络的多源协作传输架构,引入子源协作传输方法,并详细介绍了多源协作机制的理论模型、报文格式以及子源协作管理的核心工作流程.通过仿真实验验证,多源协作传输控制机制能够将拥塞窗口平均利用率从51%提升至96%,并提高网络利用率和吞吐量.     

Improving TCP performance over optical burst-switched (OBS) networks using forward segment redundancy

Random contentions occur in optical burst-switched (OBS) networks because of one-way signaling and lack of optical buffers. These contentions can occur at low loads and are not necessarily an indication of congestion. The loss caused by them, however, causes TCP at the transport layer to reduce its send rate drastically, which is unnecessary and reduces overall performance. In this paper, we propose forward segment redundancy (FSR), a proactive technique to prevent data loss during random contentions in the optical core. With FSR, redundant TCP segments are appended to each burst at the edge and redundant burst segmentation is implemented in the core, so that when a contention occurs, primarily redundant data are dropped. We develop an analytical throughput model for TCP over OBS with FSR and perform extensive simulations. FSR is found to improve TCP’s performance by an order of magnitude at high loads and by over two times at lower loads.     

QoE-aware video distribution mechanism in FiWi

The mismatch of transmission ability causes the discontinuous transmission of video services in fiber-wireless access network,aimed at this problem,an QoE-aware video distribution mechanism was proposed.According to the structural characteristics of fiber-wireless access network,link state information and scalable video coding structure was considered,a QoE evaluation mode was established,and the particle swarm optimization algorithm was used to select optimal video transmission rate.Then the node transmission capacity and the node matching degree was analyzed,transmission path for the services was selected,so as to ensure the reliable transmission of services.The results show that the proposed mechanism can effectively improve the utilization rate of network resources and reduce network congestion while improving the quality of the user experience.     

iTCP: an intelligent TCP with neural network based end-to-end congestion control for ad-hoc multi-hop wireless mesh networks

Maintaining the performance of reliable transport protocols, such as transmission control protocol (TCP), over wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is a challenging problem due to the unique characteristics of data transmission over WMNs. The unique characteristics include multi-hop communication over lossy and non-deterministic wireless mediums, data transmission in the absence of a base station, similar traffic patterns over neighboring mesh nodes, etc. One of the reasons for the poor performance of conventional TCP variants over WMNs is that the congestion control mechanisms in conventional TCP variants do not explicitly account for these unique characteristics. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel artificial intelligence based congestion control technique for reliable data transfer over WMNs. The synergy with artificial intelligence is established by exploiting a carefully designed neural network (NN) in the congestion control mechanism. We analyze the proposed NN based congestion control technique in detail and incorporate it into TCP to create a new variant that we name as intelligent TCP or iTCP. We evaluate the performance of iTCP using both ns-2 simulations and real testbed experiments. Our evaluation results demonstrate that our proposed congestion control technique exhibits a significant improvement in total network throughput and average energy consumption per transmitted bit compared to the congestion control techniques used in other TCP variants.     

Adaptive smooth multicast protocol for multimedia transmission: Implementation details and performance evaluation

In this paper we propose a new single‐rate multicast congestion control scheme named Adaptive Smooth Multicast Protocol (ASMP), for multimedia transmission over best‐effort networks. The smoothness lays in the calculation and adaptation of the transmission rate, which is based on dynamic estimations of protocols' parameters and dynamic adjustment of the ‘smoothness factor’, as well. ASMP key attributes are: (a) TCP‐friendly behavior, (b) adaptive scalability to large sets of receivers, (c) high bandwidth utilization, and finally (d) smooth transmission rates, which are suitable for multimedia applications. We evaluate the performance of ASMP and investigate its behavior under various network conditions through extensive simulations conducted with the network simulator software (ns2). Simulation results show that ASMP can be regarded as a serious competitor of TFMCC and PGMCC. In many cases, ASMP outperforms TFMCC in terms of TCP‐friendliness and smooth transmission rates, while PGMCC presents lower scalability than ASMP. We have implemented ASMP on top of RTP/RTCP protocols in ns2 by adding all the RTP/RTCP protocol's attributes that are defined in RFC 3550 and related to quality of service metrics. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal channel access for TCP performance improvement in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology to improve spectrum utilization. Most of previous work on CR networks concentrates on maximizing transmission rate in the physical layer. However, the end-to-end transmission control protocol (TCP) performance perceived by secondary users is also a very important factor in CR networks. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-channel access scheme in CR networks, where the channel access is based on the TCP throughput in the transport layer. Specifically, we formulate the channel access process in CR network as a restless bandit system. With this stochastic optimization formulation, the optimal channel access policy is indexable, meaning that the channels with highest indices should be selected to transmit TCP traffic. In addition, we exploit cross-layer design methodology to improve TCP throughput, where modulation and coding at the physical layer and frame size at the data-link layer are considered together with TCP throughput in the transport layer to improve TCP performance. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.     

基于蚁群优化的高性能拥塞控制路由机制

为了有效地解决偏远地理区域通信网络存在的网络拥塞严重、数据成功传输率低、数据冗余率高以及网络整体性能不佳等问题,通过考虑网络节点运动区域性特点,基于蚁群优化机制,设计出一种新型的容延容断网络 (DTN) 拥塞控制路由优化算法。该算法结合蚁群优化机制中的信息素因子,在同一对源、目的网络节点之间进行多次数据信息传输操作。在数据信息传输方向上,获取各个网络节点的中转跳数平均值,评估各个网络节点的中转价值;参考蚁群优化机制中的启发值因子,将网络节点的中转价值与剩余存储容量相关联,构成网络节点作为中转节点的评定参数,选取评定参数最大的网络节点完成其中转任务。实验表明：该算法有效控制了网络拥塞,提高了数据成功传输率,降低了数据信息冗余率,使网络整体性能得到进一步优化。     

Normalized Queueing Delay: Congestion Control Jointly Utilizing Delay and Marking

Depending upon the type of feedback that is primarily used as a congestion measure, congestion control methods can be generally classified into two categories: marking/loss-based or delay-based. While both marking and queueing delay provide information about the congestion state of a network, they have been largely treated with separate control strategies. In this paper, we propose the notion of the normalized queueing delay, which serves as a congestion measure by combining both delay and marking information. Utilizing normalized queueing delay (NQD), we propose an approach to congestion control that allows a source to scale its rate dynamically to prevailing network conditions through the use of a time-variant set-point. In ns-2 simulation studies, an NQD-enabled FAST TCP demonstrates a significant link utilization improvement over FAST TCP under certain conditions. In addition, we propose another NQD-based controller D + M TCP (Delay+Marking TCP) that achieves quick convergence to fair and stable rates with nearly full link utilization. Therefore, NQD is a suitable candidate as a congestion measure for practical congestion control.     

Rate Control Algorithm Considering Mobility in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

For reducing the loss of data packet due to network congestion and mobility, rate control algorithm is effective means for ensuring the fair allocation of network resource among communication flows and alleviating network congestion. The Transport Control Protocol (TCP) was originally designed for wire-line networks, where the links are assumed to be reliable and with fixed capacities. However, the performance of TCP becomes very poor when it is directly used in ad hoc networks. Some optimization-based congestion control schemes have been proposed to improve TCP performance in ad hoc networks, but the mobility of hosts and route change frequently are not considered for designing rate control algorithm. In this paper, we propose rate control algorithms in a more practical way by taking into account link congestion and node movement. Numerical results show that the rate control algorithms can approach the globally optimal value and show the effect of the node mobility on the algorithms.     

AN ENHANCEMENT SCHEME OF TCP PROTOCOL IN MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS： MME-TCP

Transmission Control Protocol （TCP） optimization in Mobile Ad hoc NETworks （MANETs） is a challenging issue because of some unique characteristics of MANETs. In this paper, a new end-to-end mechanism based on multiple metrics measurement is proposed to improve TCP performance in MANETs. Multi-metric Measurement based Enhancement of TCP （MME-TCP） designs the metrics and the identification algorithm according to the characteristics of MANETs and the experiment results. Furthermore, these metrics are measured at the sender node to reduce the overhead of control information over networks. Simulation results show that MME-TCP mechanism achieves a significant performance improvement over standard TCP in MANETs.     

Energy Attentive and Pre-fault Recognize Mechanism for Distributed Wireless Sensor Network Using Fuzzy Logic Approach

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been transforming over recent years with development in the design of smart real-time applications. However, it presents numerous challenges in terms of fault-tolerant communication, low latency, scalability, and transmission efficiency. It is extremely difficult for WSNs to detect runtime faults since they're unaware of the internal processes at work within the sensor node. As a result, valuable sensed information cannot reach its destination and performance starts degrading. Towards this objective, the proposed mechanism applies a novel pre-fault detection mechanism based on a fuzzy rule-based method for multilevel transmission in distributed sensor networks. The proposed mechanism uses a fuzzy rule set to make routing decisions. A fuzzy decision rule set is proposed to perform routing based on the fuzzy fault count status of a node. The proposed mechanism assists in identifying the fault in advance and determining the optimal routing path to save energy and improve network performance. In accordance with the node fault status, the data transmission rate is finalized to prevent further energy consumption. The results demonstrated that the proposed mechanism performed well on judgment evaluation metrics like the energy dissipation ratio, throughput, packet loss rate and communication delay.