无线自组网与Internet互连中TCP流公平性分析与改进

通过实验与分析揭示了基于IEEE 802.11 MAC的无线自组网与Internet互连时TCP流间的不公平性现象及其产生原因,并基于网关带宽占用对互连环境下TCP流间的公平性进行定义,提出了一种基于网关动态带宽控制的TCP流公平性解决方案TCP-GAFC。TCP-GAFC只在网关节点上进行实现,无需修改TCP协议和MAC协议,具有很好的适用性和可扩展性。仿真实验表明,TCP-GAFC显著地改进了互连环境下TCP流间的公平性,并能达到合理的总吞吐量。     

TCP-Rab的吞吐量模型及实验研究

基于接收端通告的TCP(TCP-Rab,receiver advertisement based TCP)协议是我们实现的一种新的TCP协议,在文献[1]中对TCP-Rab的算法设计、实现进行了详细阐述。本文对TCP-Rab进行了少量改进,重点导出了TCP-Rab的吞吐量性能模型,并对TCP-Rab进行了试验研究。该模型采用统计的方法,在导出TCP-Rab的吞吐量性能模型的时候,不仅考虑了TCP连接的拥塞避免阶段对吞吐量的影响,也考虑了慢启动阶段对吞吐量的影响,同时还考虑了一个发送窗口内多个数据包随机丢失对吞吐量的影响,因此该模型能适用于实际的网络环境中。     

面向电网业务质量保障的5G高可靠低时延通信资源调度方法

该文研究面向电网业务质量保障的5G 高可靠低时延通信(URLLC)的资源调度机制,以高效利用低频段蜂窝通信系统内有限的频谱和功率资源来兼顾电力终端传输速率和调度时延、调度公平性,保障不同电力业务的通信质量（QoS）。首先,基于URLLC的高可靠低时延传输特性,建立电力终端多小区下行传输模型。然后,提出面向系统下行吞吐量最大化的资源分配问题模型并对其进行分步求解,分别提出基于定价机制与非合作博弈的功率分配算法和基于调度时延要求的改进比例公平算法（DPF）动态调度信道资源。仿真结果表明,提出的资源调度方法能在保证一定传输可靠性和公平性的条件下降低电力终端调度时延,满足不同业务等级的QoS需求,与已知算法对比有一定的优越性。     

多跳对基于802.11的Ad Hoc网络TCP流公平性的影响

多跳是Ad Hoc网络主要的特点,也是很多问题(如TCP流不公平、不稳定以及吞吐量下降等)产生的原因.文中基于NS2仿真平台研究了跳数及接入时间对TCP流公平性的影响,给出了不同TCP流的信道接入能力,深入分析了多跳TCP流公平性下降的原因,并在此基础上提出了改进公平性的建议.研究的结果表明,不同跳数的TCP流共存时,跳数较少的TCP流会占优甚至垄断信道.当跳数相同时,提前接入的TCP流会占优甚至垄断信道.     

基于拥塞估计的TCP窗口在线学习方法

针对传统TCP拥塞窗口更新、控制机制所导致的Ad Hoc网络吞吐量下降的问题,利用机器学习算法来改善TCP在Ad Hoc网络中的性能。该方法利用确认帧的时间间隔,通过连续动作集(CALA)算法快速学习并估计当前网络链路中的拥塞状况,从而能够迅速调整TCP拥塞窗口。仿真实验表明:当Ad Hoc网络环境较好时,学习型TCP的吞吐量略优于TCP-Few、TCP-Reno协议,但在环境较差的情况下,学习型TCP的吞吐量远远优于TCP-Few和TCP-Reno协议。     

一种3GPP LTE网络的TCP拥塞控制方法

现有的传输控制协议(TCP)拥塞控制机制源自有线网络,未考虑无线基站介质访问控制(MAC)层调度器的特性,影响了TCP协议在长期演进(LTE)系统上的传输性能。提出一种跨层的TCP拥塞控制方法,由MAC层和TCP共同解决TCP虚假超时问题。此方法中,MAC层提供超时信息,TCP层识别出虚假超时后调整数据速率,从而避免系统性能损失,保证MAC层稳定工作。仿真结果表明,在保证用户公平性的同时,新方法可以有效解决虚假超时问题,提高用户实际吞吐量。     

一种基于数据重传率的无线自组织网络TCP公平性策略

IEEE 802.11 MAC协议被广泛应用于多跳无线网络的研究与示范网中,802.11协议采用RTS/CTS策略减少了隐终端 问题对无线TCP性能的影响。但在多条并行链路间,隐终端问题的存在使得中间链路节点不能有效的接入到信道,导致TCP性能和公平性严重下降。该文提出了一种新的基于传输层数据重传率方法,对于受到严重干扰的中间链路不断获取它的数据重传率,在重传率增加时动态减少802.11退避计时器竞争窗口大小,增加其接入信道能力,从而提高其TCP性能和公平性。仿真结果证明,使用基于传输层数据重传率方法,不仅能基本上保证并行链路TCP的稳定性,还可以极大地提高中间链路TCP公平性。     

混合网络环境下的TCPW改进算法

针对TCP Westwood(简称TCPW)拥塞避免算法在高误码率无线网络环境下不能区分丢包原因和性能仍显不足的问题,分析RTT的变化,提出了一种简单有效的改进算法,称为TCP VT,能有效地区分拥塞丢包和无线丢包,仿真实验表明,改进后的算法在高误码率情况下提高了网络利用率和吞吐量,同时仍具有良好的公平性和友好性.     

网络切换对TCP吞吐量和公平性的影响分析

无线移动网络的发展日新月异.TCP协议是目前互联网上使用的最为广泛的端到端可靠传输协议,但其应用在无线网络上的时候,TCP性能下降明显.文中详细分析了TCP移动网络的切换对TCP造成影响的几个重要方面.最后通过在NS2上进行实验揭示了对多个TCP流公平性的影响,即切换后RTT越小的TCP流的吞吐量增长的越快,同时静态链路会夺取无线链路的链路资源.     

用于卫星通信系统的空间通信协议网关设计

针对卫星通信系统中传输控制协议(TCP)传输性能不理想的问题,设计并实现了一种基于空间通信协议的网关。在网关设计中,优化了Vegas拥塞控制算法的参数,并通过空间通信协议连接表实现了对多连接的支持。卫星通信模拟系统中的测试结果表明,当卫星链路具有高误码率和大传输延时(大于1 000 ms)情况下,该网关的性能与直接使用TCP相比,平均吞吐量提高比达10∶1,且多连接情况下各连接之间竞争带宽的公平性表现较为满意。     

A Cross-layer Dual Queue Approach for Improving TCP Fairness in Infrastructure WLANs

Fairness is one of the most important performance measures in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), where channel is accessed through competition. In this paper, we focus on the fairness problem between TCP uplink and downlink flows in infrastructure WLANs from the cross-layer perspective. First, we show that there exists a notable discrepancy between throughput of uplink flow and that of downlink flow, and discuss its root cause from the standpoint of different responses to TCP data packet drop and TCP ACK packet drop at the access point (AP) buffer. In order to mitigate this unfairness, we propose a dual queue scheme, which works in a cross-layer manner. It employs two separate queues at the AP, one for the data packets of downlink TCP flows and another for the ACK packets of uplink TCP flows, and selects these queues with appropriate probabilities so that TCP per-flow fairness is improved. Moreover, we analyze the behavior of the dual queue scheme and derive throughputs of uplink and downlink flows. Based on this analysis, we obtain the optimal queue selection probabilities for fairness. Extensive simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme is effective and useful in resolving the TCP unfairness problem without deteriorating overall utilization.     

A buffer management algorithm for improving up/down transmission congestion protocol fairness in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks

The fair allocation of the resources is an important issue in wireless local area network (WLAN) because all wireless nodes compete for the same wireless radio channel. When uplink and downlink transmission congestion protocol (TCP) flows coexist in WLAN, the network service is biased toward the uplink TCP flows, and the downlink TCP flows tend to starve. In this article, we investigate the special up/down TCP unfairness problem and point out that the direct cause is the uplink acknowledgement (ACK) packets occupy most buffer space of access point. We thus propose a buffer management algorithm to ensure the fairness among uplink and downlink TCP flows. In order to limit the greedy behavior of ACK packets, the proposed algorithm adjusts the maximum size of buffer allocated for the ACK packets. Analysis and simulation results show that the proposed solution not only provides the fairness but also achieves 10–20% lower queue delay and higher network goodput than the other solutions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross-layer feedback architecture for mobile device protocol stacks

Applications using traditional protocol stacks (e.g., TCP/IP) from wired networks do not function efficiently in mobile wireless environments. This is primarily due to the layered architecture and implementation of protocol stacks. One mechanism to improve the efficiency of the stack is cross-layer feedback, that is, making information from within one layer available to another layer of the stack. For example, TCP retransmissions can be reduced by making it aware of network disconnections or handoff events. We highlight the need for a cross-layer feedback architecture and identify key design goals for an architecture. We present our ECLAIR architecture, which satisfies these design goals. We describe a prototype implementation that validates ECLAIR. We also discuss other cross-layer architectures and provide a cross-layer design guide.     

Differentiated TCP User Perception over Downlink Packet Data Cellular Systems

Current downlink scheduling algorithms in the (enhanced) third-generation (3G) cellular packet systems exploit instantaneous channel status of multiple users, but most of them are blind to traffic information. To improve TCP users' perception of quality-of-services (QoSs), characterized by response delay, goodput, and always-on connectivity, we propose a cross-layer hierarchical scheduler with traffic awareness and channel dependence to properly prioritize buffer and radio resource allocation among different TCP classes. The scheduler has two tiers: at the IP layer, an intrauser scheduler enhances a common practice, i.e., the DiffServ-based buffer management, by dequeuing same-user TCP packets according to per-class specified and measured responsiveness; at the MAC layer, an interuser scheduler transmits the dequeued packets by considering the opportunistic channel states, mean throughput, and class ID of all users. Both tiers consider the online measured throughput, a cross-layer metric, to achieve resource and performance fairness and TCP classification. Experiments show that, compared with (variations of) proportional fairness (PF) and other schemes, our scheduler can notably speed up time-critical interactive TCP services (HTTP and TELNET) or TCP slow-starts with minor cost to bulk file transfer (FTP) or long-lived flows. It offers scalable and low-cost TCP performance enhancement over the emerging cellular systems     

Measurement-based TFRC: improving TFRC in heterogeneous mobile networks

As a well-known multimedia stream transport protocol, TFRC provides smooth transfer rate under stable network conditions, and achieves good fairness to TCP. However, it is not flexible in heterogeneous mobile networks because the available bandwidth varies rapidly. This paper proposes a measurement based TFRC (MBTFRC) protocol, which uses passive bandwidth measurements at the receiver to improve the flexibility of TFRC. In addition, a window-based EWMA filter with two weights is used to achieve stability and fairness simultaneously. Simulation results verify the flexibility, stability and fairness of MBTFRC.     

TCP-aware bidirectional bandwidth allocation in IEEE 802.16 networks

In this paper, we propose a bidirectional bandwidth-allocation mechanism to improve TCP performance in the IEEE 802.16 broadband wireless access networks. By coupling the bandwidth allocation for uplink and downlink connections, the proposed mechanism increases the throughput of the downlink TCP flow and it enhances the efficiency of uplink bandwidth allocation for the TCP acknowledgment (ACK). According to the IEEE 802.16 standard, when serving a downlink TCP flow, the transmission of the uplink ACK, which is performed over a separate unidirectional connection, incurs additional bandwidth-request/allocation delay. Thus, it increases the round trip time of the downlink TCP flow and results in the decrease of throughput accordingly. First, we derive an analytical model to investigate the effect of the uplink bandwidth-request/allocation delay on the downlink TCP throughput. Second, we propose a simple, yet effective, bidirectional bandwidth-allocation scheme that combines proactive bandwidth allocation with piggyback bandwidth request. The proposed scheme reduces unnecessary bandwidth-request delay and the relevant signaling overhead due to proactive allocation; meanwhile, it maintains high efficiency of uplink bandwidth usage by using piggyback request. Moreover, our proposed scheme is quite simple and practical; it can be simply implemented in the base station without requiring any modification in the subscriber stations or resorting to any cross-layer signaling mechanisms. The simulation results ascertain that the proposed approach significantly increases the downlink TCP throughput and the uplink bandwidth efficiency.     

A Cross-Layer Approach for Improving TCP Performance in Mobile Environments

Network-layer mobility protocols have been developed to keep continuous connectivity for mobile hosts while transparent to the higher layers. However, Due to its distinct characteristics of different from traditional TCP/IP environment, mobility poses substantial impacts on TCP performance in mobile environments. This paper proposes a new cross-layer approach, by introducing a mobility detection element in the network layer which interacts with the transport layer to optimize TCP operations. As changes are only made to the endpoints, this approach preserves the end-to-end semantics of TCP. Different from most exiting works, which utilize either transport or network layer alone without much cross-layer cooperation, our approach allows the use of mobility information in TCP. We analytically compare this approach against existing approaches and show that our approach outperforms prior approaches in terms of effective data resumption time. Through performance simulations, our approach demonstrates that it can effectively improve TCP performance in Mobile IPv6-based mobile environments.     

Cross-Layer-based Local Repair for Maximizing Goodput and Minimizing Control Messages in Multicasting MANET

The Multicast Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (MAODV) protocol achieves multicast routing in self-organizing wireless mobile on-demand networks, e.g., Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs). However, unreliable wireless links degrade network reliability and network goodput, and the unreliable link problem becomes worse in multicasting because a multicast tree consists of more number of wireless links. MAODV adopts a broadcast-type local repair, and thus yields a large number of broadcast-type repair messages, increases extensive control overhead, and involves largely power consumption. Thus, a cross-layer unicast-type multihop local repair approach is proposed to recover broken links in multicasting MANETs. Additionally, the cross-layer mechanism provides mobile nodes to send a cross-layer message to the TCP sender to keep current congestion window (cwnd) and slow start threshold (ssthresh) when downstream links are temporarily broken, and then increases network goodput. Finally, the optimal number of neighbor-tiers is analyzed and the optimal substitute node is identified. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms other approaches in successful repair rate, control message overhead, packet delivery ratio, and network goodput.     

Vertical optimization of data transmission for mobile wireless terminals

A major problem for TCP connections over wireless links is that errors introduced by the wireless channel interfere with the TCP protocol, leading to reduced data rates and power wastage. Based on accurate simulations for the TCP and IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols, we discuss recipes to optimize transmission. It is argued that the best approach is to restrict modifications to the mobile device. While this requires separate solutions for the uplink and downlink, the results of optimization are then available when roaming into any WLAN obeying the relevant MAC protocol. Simulation results show that the combination of specific strategies with a vertical interaction between the protocol layers can lead to the required improvements, giving a promising approach to enhance the performance of wireless mobile terminals.